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Scars of Empire –
A Juxtaposition of Duncan Campbell Scott and Jacques Soustelle
James Cullingham
A dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies in Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy
Graduate Program in History
York University
Toronto, Ontario
February 2014
© James Cullingham 2014
ii
Abstract
Scars of Empire juxtaposes the lives and careers of the Canadian poet and civil
servant Duncan Campbell Scott (1862-1947) and the French ethnologist and politician
Jacques Soustelle (1912-1990). The work adopts a transnational approach to intellectual
history that involves Algeria, Canada, France and Mexico. It argues that a juxtaposition
of these individuals illuminates the struggles of liberal modern nation-states in
relationship with Indigenous peoples. The dissertation explores the failures of both
French liberal imperialism and Canadian domestic colonization in native policy, in
Canada in the half century following the establishment of the Canadian nation state, and
in France, during an acute crisis of de-colonization in the conflict over independence for
l’Algérie française.
This exploration of Scott and Soustelle features examinations of Scott’s poetry and
fictional prose; Soustelle’s ethnological works concerning Mexico; archives of the
Canadian Indian Department during Scott’s tenure; Canadian literary archives concerning
Scott’s career and the post-Confederation development of arts and letters in Canada;
French governmental archives concerning Soustelle’s stint as Governor General of
Algeria; archival sources in Mexico concerning Soustelle’s engagement with Mexican
colleagues and his role as representative of the French resistance to Nazism while
stationed in Mexico; and archives in French museums and academic institutions
concerning the history of French anthropology, archaeology and ethnology during
Soustelle’s lifetime.
Employing a transnational approach in comparative intellectual history
this dissertation puts Canada into a global conversation about legacies of settler
iii
colonialism and European imperialism. It argues that national challenges concerning
Aboriginal peoples in Canada and in France’s relationship with its former territorial
possessions in Africa are manifestations of contradictions and exclusions inherent in the
application of liberalism. Scott and Soustelle are juxtaposed in this dissertation in order to
better understand the history and ideology of policies directed at Indigenous populations
in Canada and in l’Algérie française.
iv
Dedication
For Carmine, Consuelo, Doug, Elsi, Roberta and Walter – my family,
my teachers…
v
Acknowledgments
At the outset of this dissertation, I especially wish to express thanks to historian E.
Brian Titley and the literary scholar Stan Dragland with whom I collaborated on the
documentary film Duncan Campbell Scott: The Poet and the Indians and whose principal
academic works about Scott are central to my understanding of the subject.1 I also
acknowledge the contributions of everyone who worked on that project, particularly
cinematographer René Sioui Labelle, editor Deborah Palloway and co-producer Michael
Allder of The National Film Board of Canada.
My curiosity about the north and admiration for its people have been inspired and
nurtured by an association with Temagami in north-eastern Ontario, Trent University in
Peterborough, Ontario and Camp Wanapitei on Lake Temagami. I express heartfelt
gratitude to Bruce and Carol Hodgins, John Milloy, Gary Potts, John Wadland and others
for all they have shared with me.
As a graduate student following almost two decades of work in public
broadcasting and documentary film making, I was encouraged to compare Canada and
Mexico by my co-supervisor, the cultural historian of Mexico, Anne Rubenstein of York
University and Kenneth Mills, professor of history and, at that time, director of Latin
American Studies at the University of Toronto. Co-supervisor, Canadian ethnohistorian
Carolyn Podruchny, delights in history that employs a multi-disciplinary, culturally
vi
layered approach.2 These scholars did not dissuade me from viewing history through an
interdisciplinary, comparative lens. Their courses and supervision whetted my appetite to
reflect on Canada and Mexico in a broader context about legacies of colonizing as well as
decolonizing and re-colonizing in the modern world. The Oaxaca Summer Institute in
Modern Mexican History organized by Professors William Beezley of the University of
Arizona and William French of the University of British Columbia further spurred my
thinking along these lines.
A decade after the Scott film was released I was in a doctoral course on Modern
European History taught by William Irvine at York University. I expressed an interest in
writing a paper about the bitter fight among French intellectuals over the Algerian War of
independence. I was already familiar with the writings of both Jean Paul Sartre and
Albert Camus on the matter and how their argument contributed to the ending of a close
friendship. Professor Irvine encouraged me to examine the role of Jacques Soustelle, a
man I had never heard of. In so doing, I became transfixed by an ethnologist, provocateur
and politician whose life directly encompassed some of the great dramas and intellectual
shifts of the twentieth century: the rise of fascism in Europe; French resistance to
Nazism; the origins of modern French ethnology; Mexican indigenismo; and the bitter
end of more than a century of French rule in Algeria.3
I met with journalist Bernard Ullmann, Soustelle’s political biographer, while
conducting my research in Paris. Ullmann, who died in late 2008, kindly shared his
viii
infectious fascination with Soustelle, fine whiskey and the transcript of an incomplete
memoir that Soustelle had recounted orally to one of Ullmann’s colleagues.4 I want to
acknowledge Ullmann’s generosity, terrific humour and his splendid example in making
a career transition from the discipline of journalism to longer-form, in-depth
investigation.
I wish to thank archivists and librarians in Aix-en-Provence, la Ciudad de México,
Kingston, Ontario, Oaxaca, Ottawa, Paris, San Cristóbal de las Casas and Toronto for
their generous assistance. Seneca College in Toronto has been supportive to me as I went
along this doctoral path while continuing my duties as professor of Journalism. My wife
Li Robbins and my daughters Jessica, Rachel and Sarah have constantly inspired and
supported my efforts. Since this work began, the birth of grandchildren Leo and Willa has
provided solace, lots of laughs and renewed motivation for all my endeavors.
James Cullingham, director/producer/writer, Duncan Campbell Scott – The Poet and the Indians (Toronto:
Tamarack Productions in Co-production with The National Film Board of Canada, Ontario Centre, 1995),
DVD distribution – Canada – V Tape, Toronto; international Tamarack Productions, Toronto; USA – Icarus
Films, New York); Brian Titley, A Narrow Vision: Duncan Campbell Scott and the Administration of
Indian Affairs in Canada (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1986); Stan Dragland,
Floating Voice: Duncan Campbell Scott and the Literature of Treaty 9 (Concord, Ont.: Anansi,
1994).
1
2
Carolyn Podruchny, Making The Voyageur World: Travelers and Traders in the North American Fur
Trade (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006).
3
Bernard Ullmann, Jacques Soustelle – Le Mal aimée (Paris: Plon, 1995); Nicole Racine, “Jacques
Soustelle” in Jean Maitre, Dictionnaire Biographique Du Mouvement Ouvrier Français – Quatrième partie
1914-1939 de la Première à la Seconde Guerre Mondiale, Tome 41 Rova à Szy (Paris: Les Éditions
Ouvrières, 1992);Dominique Balvet, « Jacques Soustelle et l’Algérie française: gaullisme et anti
gaullisme » (thèse doctoral sous la direction de Jean-François Sirinelli , Université Charles de Gaulle Lille
3, 2003).
4
Jacques Soustelle, “Souvenirs, Apocryphes en forme de dialogue avec George Suffert” 1988 unpublished
manuscript provided to the author in January 2008 by Bernard Ullmann. I retain that copy of the
manuscript.
Ullmann died in December 2008, a few months after our final meeting. His demise was widely reported in
the French press. See for example http://tempsreel.nouvelobs.com/medias/20081231.OBS7906/lejournaliste-bernard-ullmann-est-mort.html (accessed January 2009).
ix
Table of Contents
Abstract
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Table of Contents
List of Figures
List of Abbreviations
ii
iv
v
ix
xi
xii
Prelude
1
1. Introduction Inquietudes
4
2. Two Dead White Men
Scott
Soustelle
The Shifting Reputations of Scott and Soustelle
Conclusion
20
21
34
45
52
3. Their Journey In
54
Powassan’s Drum: Scott’s Treaty Expedition + Soustelle Finds Mexico 60
INTERLOCUTEURS VALABLES: Guides for Scott & Soustelle
71
Musiciens, Poètes, Adorateurs
75
Her Fierce Soul Hates Her Breath
79
Ceux d’en Bas
104
Conclusion
119
4. Burden of Empire
Burden of Empire
Imperial Legacies
Liberal Exclusion in Canada
Liberal Exclusions in French Algeria
Imperial Humanism versus Aggressive Civilization
Jacques Soustelle and the Burden of Empire
Duncan Campbell Scott and the British Connection
Conclusion
123
123
123
129
136
150
159
168
172
5. Arts and Science
Introduction
Jacques Soustelle, French Ethnologist
Duncan Campbell Scott and the Foundations of Canadian Culture
Jacques Soustelle and the vulgarisation of French Ethnology
The Artists as Mature Men
Conclusion
174
174
177
187
201
209
220
x
6. Politics
222
Introduction
222
Overview of Scott and Soustelle
224
The Question of Politics
228
Duncan Campbell Scott: Tightening the Vise of Canadian Indian Policy 230
Scott and Bill 14
233
Scott and the (mis)-Use of Ethnography
244
Le Plan Soustelle
246
Hearts and Minds
267
Conclusion
279
7. Conclusion : Past is Present
Ottawa, June 11, 2008
Paris, June 29, 2010
Self -Repudiation and Shame in the Writings of Duncan Campbell Scott
Soustelle and the Intellectual Tradition of the Franco-Algerian Conflict
Conclusion
280
280
282
285
293
303
8. Bibliography
Archival sources
Library Archives of Canada
Queen ‘s University Archives, Kingston, Ontario
Archives Nationales d’Outre-Mer, Aix-en-Provence, France
Archives Musee du Quai Branly, Paris
Archives Museum National d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris
Manucripts of Interviews/Memoirs of Jacques Soustelle
Books
Articles
Dissertations/M.A. Theses
Governmental Reports
Audio Visual Materials
Audio Documentary
307
307
307
308
308
308
309
310
310
324
326
327
327
328
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List of Figures
1 Albany River fisher near Achapi Lake 1993 (photo by James Cullingham
2 Market San Juan de Chamula, 2008
3 Duncan Campbell Scott c.1885
4 Jacques Soustelle c.1938
5 Area of Treaty 9 Expedition
6 Mexico
7 Primary Soustelle research area 1932-36
8 Soustelle secondary research area
9 Jacques & Georgette Soustelle, Chiapas 1934
10 Treaty 9 canoe Albany River 1905
11 T’chankin c.1934
12 Jimmy Swaine 1905
13 Mazahua drawing of Jacques Soustelle c. 1932
14 Women at Brunswick House 1906
15. Edmund Morris 1906
16 Otomí festival
17 Lacandon family
18 Jacques Soustelle & T’chankin c.1934
19 From MASSES, Sept. 1933 “La Question Religieuse au Mexique”
20 Boubsila (Bérardi) c.1955
21 Parliament Hill, Ottawa at dawn June 11, 2008
22 Sunrise ceremony, Victoria Island, Ottawa
23 Charles de Gaulle portrait, Hôtel de Ville, Paris, June 2010
1
2
25
39
54
55
56
57
63
69
72
74
77
82
93
105
108
109
114
254
280
282
283
xii
Abbreviations
This list with abbreviations will help the reader with the Endnotes. A detailed list of
principal collections appears in the Bibliography.)
Archives Centre d’Histoire Contemporaine – Centre d’Histoire, l’Université Sciences-Po,
Paris ACHC
Archives du Musée du quai Branly, Paris (MqB)
Archives nationales d’outre-mer, Aix-en-Provence (CAOM)
Archivos Frans Blom, San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, México (AFB)
Archivos del Museo Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Ciudad de México (BMBAH)
Archives Association Germaine Tillion, Paris (AGT)
Biblioteca Daniel Cosio Villegas, Colegio de México, Ciudad de México (BDCV)
Bibliothèque centrale du Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, Paris (MNHN)
Bibliothèque national de France – Mitterand (BnF)
Centre d’études mexicaines et centreaméricaines, Ciudad de México (CEMCA)
Centre Albert Camus, Cité du Livre, Aix-en-Provence (CAC)
Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa (LAC-BAC) (LMS for fonds of literary artists such
as DC Scott and Elise Aylen)
Inathèque, Bibliothèque national de France – Mitterand (INA)
Queen’s University Archives, Kingston, Ontario (QUA)
Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto (TFRBL)
1
Prelude
Albany River 1993
Albany River, June 1993. My companion and I are five days paddle down river from
Osnaburgh. The Treaty 9 commission of Duncan Campbell Scott travelled these waters in
1905. As we come out of a winding set of swifts we see a man standing in a canoe where
the river widens. As we approach, it become clear he is hauling up a net. He smiles a bit
as he struggles. After a few more minutes tugging, the large flat head of a fish with long
tentacles on its face emerges. As the sixty pound sturgeon flops inside his canoe, the man
dispatches it with the butt end of a sawed off paddle. He says there’s a lot of food in a
sturgeon. He and his family, camped nearby, have travelled up river from their spring
camp.
Figure 1 Albany River fisher near Achapi Lake 1993 (photo by James Cullingham)
2
Ontario 1995
Osnaburgh First Nation, north-western Ontario, August 1995. My documentary crew and
I are driving through ‘Oz’ in pitch darkness. We’re on our way back to a motel in Pickle
Lake in the midst of a film shoot about Duncan Campbell Scott. He was here on Lake St.
Joseph at the headwaters of the Albany River in 1905. A meeting was held. A treaty was
signed. Scott wrote poetry and took photographs. In ’95 Osnaburgh is a mess. The kids
burned the school down last winter. The nursing station is abandoned. Windows in the
public buildings are covered with thick wire mesh like one sees in an American urban
ghetto. That night kids lunge toward our van holding bags of solvents to their faces. As
we slow down, a teenage girl bangs on the side of the van. Wendat/Québécois
cameraman René Sioui Labelle is at the wheel. He rolls down the window, the girl
screams in his face, “I want to die!”
Chiapas, México 2008
Figure 2 market in San Juan de Chamula 2008 (photo by James Cullingham)
I’ve taken a colectivo, a wonderfully packed, lurching communal mini-bus cum taxi, from
San Cristobal de las Casas in Chiapas to the nearby Tzotzil Mayan community of San
Juan de Chamula. I’m conducting doctoral research into Jacques Soustelle who was here
in the 1930s working on his doctoral thesis. The village had been a flashpoint of conflict
during the Zapatista rebellion against the Mexican state in the 1990s. San Juan de
Chamula, and a few neighbour villages, now enjoy increased local autonomy as part of
an uneasy truce between Zapatista loyalists and the federal government of Mexico.
It’s market day in San Juan de Chamula. Not only is the town square packed with
locals and peasants from more remote mountain villages selling agricultural products,
handicrafts and household goods, the elaborate local church is packed with people, many
of whom are chanting and swaying while appearing to be in an altered state. I’ve
3
purchased a pass from the local municipal hall to enter the church – all cameras are
forbidden in its interior.
As I leave the church, a few middle-aged men invite me to follow them up a flight
of stairs to a balcony in the rectory overlooking a courtyard behind. The stairwell is full
of men and women playing musical instruments ranging from guitars to fiddles to various
drums to all the brass instruments in a Mexican marching band. By the time we reach the
walkway along the balcony the air is thickly clouded with the wondrous smell of copal, a
Mayan form of incense. My companions stop just outside a door leading into a small
room off the passageway that leads round the courtyard. We pause, I enjoying the music
and the scent of smouldering copal. Then they beckon me to follow them into the room.
Women and men are huddled together - alternately holding, unwrapping and immersing
tiny wooden or clay figures of their saints directly in the smoke from small piles of
glowing copal. After each figurine has been held for a minute or two directly in the
smoke, each is wrapped in a colourful cloth and taken back down the stairs, across the
courtyard into the back door of the church. Those in the room, some of whom are very
elderly, are speaking as quietly and fervently in the local Tzotzil Mayan dialect as the
accompanying music will allow. While some of the figurines appear vaguely Christian to
me, there are no priests and all blessings are in Tzotzil Mayan. A few people make the
sign of the cross.
When all the santitos have been cleansed, blessed and returned to the church, I
ask my companions what was the meaning of what we’d witnessed. They explain that
once a year, all the saints are removed from the church, cleansed and then returned.
They say they were happy for me to see it because I agreed not to take pictures.
4
1. Introduction: Inquietudes
This dissertation is an interdisciplinary voyage in intellectual history. By
juxtaposing Duncan Campbell Scott and Jacques Soustelle, this work puts Canada,
France and Mexico into a transnational conversation about the scars of empire. These
men’s shared focus on the lives of Indigenous peoples as expressed in ethnology, the
administration of governments, literature and politics provides a unifying thread. Through
an exploration of Scott and Soustelle, it is concerned with the modern legacies of
colonialism, imperialism and liberalism. Scott and Soustelle are juxtaposed in this
dissertation in order to better understand the history and ideology of policies directed at
Indigenous populations in Canada and in l’Algérie française.
This work began in a canoe. In the summer of 1992, I was camped with my
family near Horseshoe Bay in Pukakswa National Park on the north shore of Lake
Superior. At the suggestion of my friend and colleague, the filmmaker, anthropologist
and author Hugh Brody, I took a collection of Duncan Campbell Scott’s poems along. In
the evenings when the wind calmed down on that great inland sea, I would paddle out to
the mouth of the Pic River near the Heron Bay First Nation. Drifting in the prolonged Lake
Superior sunset, I discovered that Scott’s poetry was more intriguing and perplexing than I
had presumed. I had first encountered Scott as an undergraduate student. Scott was
generally regarded, in the circles I kept, as the notorious early twentieth-century
bureaucratic mastermind of Canadian Indian policy. Paddling in the same waters Scott
had visited on a Treaty expedition in 1906, I began to realize that his story was far more
complex than I had imagined. How did this accomplished artist come to participate in
5
some of Canada’s most egregious assaults on human rights? My wrestling with that
question led to a 1995 documentary film Duncan Campbell Scott: The Poet and the
Indians.1 This dissertation emphasizes Scott’s Treaty 9 experience because of its
formative effect on his core convictions as a civil servant and because his journeys during
the summers of 1905 and 1906 furnished provided him inspiration for some of his most
important poems and short stories.
In writing this dissertation and in conducting research for the film in 1993-1994,
my archival research at Library and Archives Canada in Ottawa focused on a reading of
the “RG10” fonds of the Indian Department (well known to many historians of
Aboriginal – settler relations in Canada) in juxtaposition with Scott’s personal and
literary papers in the “Elise Aylen – DC Scott fonds”. This selective approach was
inspired by a reluctance to replicate the work already accomplished by Canadian
historians such as Titley, Olive Dickason, James R. Miller and John S. Milloy and to
‘read along the archival grain’ as an understanding of the anthropological historian Ann
Laura Stoler’s work engaged my curiosity and informed my approach.2
James Cullingham, director/producer, Duncan Campbell Scott – The Poet and The Indians , documentary
film, NFB producer Michael Allder (Tamarack Productions and National Film Board of Canada – Ontario
Centre, 1995) Distributed by VTape in Canada; Icarus Films in USA.
2
Olive Patricia Dickason, Canada’s First Nations: A History of Founding Peoples from Earliest Times
Toronto: McClelland & Stewart Inc., 1992); J. R. Miller, Shingwauk's Vision: A History of Native
(Residential Schools (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996); J.R. Miller, Skyscrapers Hide the
Heavens: A History of Indian-White Relations in Canada. 3rd ed. (Toronto ; Buffalo: University of
Toronto Press, 2000); J.R. Miller, Compact, Contract, Covenant : Aboriginal Treaty-Making in Canada
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009); John Sheridan Milloy, A National Crime: The Canadian
Government and the Residential School System, 1879-1986 (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press,
1999); Ann Laura Stoler, Along The Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009); Titley, A Narrow Vision, 1986.
1
6
This dissertation adds to the consideration of Scott in the Canadian historiography.
It engages simultaneously with Scott the senior bureaucrat and Scott the literary artist and
public intellectual. His high standing during the emergence of a Canadian English
language literature and his activities as a mandarin in the Indian department under several
governments are not contradictory, but rather, consistent expressions of a widely shared
Canadian liberal ideology that prevailed for several decades following Canadian
confederation in 1867. Scott’s literary defenders have anguished over what appears to
some as a contradiction between his art and his bureaucratic endeavours. The Canadian
literature specialist and cultural theorist Robert L. McDougall re-appraised Scott’s legacy
in the 1980s and 1990s.
The gist of the Indian problem is simple. For the first three decades of this century,
whether as an accountant responsible for Indian funds or as Deputy
Superintendant, Scott administered federal Indian policy relating to the Canadian
Indians. Aspects of that policy, questioned in some quarters even in Scott’s day,
have proved prime targets for attack in the native-rights atmosphere of the sixties
and seventies. Because Scott implemented government policy, apparently without
seriously questioning it, he has suffered the Nuremberg taint of guilt through
compliance with unjust orders. Particular charges range from duplicity to
genocide. And the reputation of the poetry, wrongly, I think, is sometimes brought
down with the reputation of the man.3
This dissertation is also a product of a lifetime’s interest in France, French
literature and existentialism, particularly the works of Albert Camus and Jean-Paul
Sartre. In his tumultuous career, Soustelle, although trained as an ethnologist, was also an
active politician. In addition, Soustelle practised counter terrorism, propaganda and
3
Robert L. McDougall, “D.C. Scott: A Trace of Documents and a Touch of Life,” in McDougall, Totems:
Essays in the Cultural History of Canada (Ottawa: Tecumseh Press, 1990), 188.
7
intelligence-gathering techniques mastered as the diplomatic representative of General
Charles de Gaulle in Mexico during the Nazi occupation of France in World War II.4
Soustelle was haunted and inspired by Mexico, a land of ancient civilizations and
site of the twentieth century’s first great national revolution. As the last Governor General
of l’Algérie française in 1955-1956, almost a quarter of a century after a transformative
introduction to Mexico as a graduate student in the 1930s, Soustelle believed he could
import to Algeria what he had garnered from a particular aspect of
post-revolutionary Mexico – the cultural, economic, political and social programme
known as indigenismo, a wide, sweeping and often contradictory set of policies to
incorporate the indio (Indian) in Mexican society. Soustelle attempted to apply what he
deemed valuable from indigenismo to relations between Europeans and Moslems in
Algeria to salvage France’s imperial project in the Maghreb. As a public figure engaged
in French politics and academic life at the highest levels, Soustelle is a continuing
presence in the history of modern France, particularly in regards to the Algerian question.
The political and ethical dimensions surrounding Soustelle’s role in Algeria are
prominent in the French historiography of Algeria and in the intellectual history of the
elites responsible for French rule in Algeria since the advent of liberal rule under the
Third Republic in the late nineteenth century. Accounts of Soustelle’s role in the end of
French rule are polarized. Scholars such as Raoul Girardet, Evelyn Lever, Bernard Droz,
Paul Tyre and Todd Shephard credit Soustelle with the best of intentions upon his arrival
in Alger in 1955.5 As Droz and Lever see his legacy,
4
Denis Rolland, Vichy Et La France Libre Au Mexique (Paris: L'Harmattan, 1990); Rolland, « Jacques
Soustelle, De l'Ethnologie à La Politique » Revue d'Histoire Moderne Et Contemporaine (1954-) 43, no.
1 (Jan. - Mar., 1996): 137-150.
5
See Bernard Droz et Evelyne Lever, Histoire de la guerre d’Algérie 1954-1962(Paris: Seuil, 1982) ; Todd
8
Quelle que soit la sévérité du jugement que l’on porte sur son politique ultérieur,
Jacques Soustelle aura eu le rare mérite de rompre avec la bonne conscience
compassée de tant de ses prédécesseurs et d’approcher avec humilité les terribles
réalités algériennes.6
Other academic commentators, including Olivier Cour Grandmaison, Carole Reynaud
Paligot and Benjamin Stora, regard Soustelle as part of a tradition of French imperial
brutality in Algeria dating back to excesses of the July Republic, the failed Arab empire of
Napoleon III and the concerted effort in the liberal era of the late nineteenth-century to
transform Algeria into a southern extension of la métropole.7 This debate will be weighed
at several junctures in this work.
This dissertation contributes to the scholarly discussion of Soustelle by carefully
examining how his formation as a doctoral candidate in 1930s Mexico informed the
political choices he made as Governor General of Algeria in 1955-1956. It explores how
Soustelle’s relationship with his doctoral supervisor, and then colleague, Paul Rivet and
Germaine Tillion, his peer in ethnological studies and cabinet colleague in Algeria,
shaped his thinking.8 It examines how the accomplished ethnologist became a failed
politician. It does not linger over the controversies concerning Soustelle’s eventual
Shepard, “How Ethnographic Research in 1930s Mexico shaped French efforts to fight Algerian
nationalism in 1955,” Paper delivered at the Unesco History Project conference in Cambridge (6-7 April
2009); Stephen Tyre, “From Algérie française to France Musulmane: Jacques Soustelle and the Myths and
Realities of ‘Integration’, 1955-1962,” French History (2006) 20(3): 276-296; Raoul Girardet, L'Idée
Coloniale En France De 1871 a 1962 (Paris: La table ronde, 1972); Alistair Horne, A Savage War of
Peace: Algeria 1954-1962 (New York: New York Review of Books, 2006 – originally published 1977),
105-7.
6
Droz et Lever, Histoire de la guerre d’Algérie, 67-68.
7
Olivier Le Cour Grandmaison, Coloniser, Exterminer: Sur La Guerre Et l'État Colonial (Paris: Fayard,
2005); Carole Reynaud Paligot, La République Raciale : Paradigme Racial Et Idéologie Républicaine,
1860-1930 (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 2006); Benjamin Stora, La Gangrène Et l'Oubli (Paris:
La Découverte, 1991).
8
For a recent comprehensive biography of Rivet and profiles of many of students including Jacques &
Georgette Soustelle and Germaine Tillion see Christine Laurière, Paul Rivet Le Savant Et Le Politique
(Paris: Publications Scientifiques du Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle, 2008); Laurière, « Paul Rivet »
(thèse doctoral dirigée par M. Jean Jarmin directeur d’études à l’EHSS, Paris).
9
clandestine opposition to the Algerian policies of Charles de Gaulle. That specific inquiry
was central to the inquiry of Ullmann’s political biography of Soustelle.9
Why make this juxtaposition? Historian Ann Laura Stoler has argued
convincingly that attention be paid to ambiguous zones of colonization in many parts of
the world including the Americas and North Africa. In a series of her monographs and in
collections of essays that she has edited, Stoler has argued for a comparative,
transnational approach in what is generally referred to as post-colonial studies.10 She has
urged scholars to get off the beaten track so to speak and to consider the effect of colonial
and imperial regimes through prisms that transcend official policy and pronouncements of
political leaders. Critically for this enterprise, Stoler suggests that colonial administrators
sometimes become willfully ignorant to defect knowledge of painful colonial realities.11
This dissertation will demonstrate that both Duncan Campbell Scott and Jacques Soustelle
sometimes achieved states of highly selective and limited consciousness in regards to the
peoples subject to the policies they championed. Her approach provides an incentive to
undertake a consideration of Canadian Indian policy and Scott’s role in it rubbed against
French policies in Algeria along with Soustelle’s role in that drama. Stoler urges that postcolonial scholars compare policies in the American, British, French, Spanish, Russian or
Soviet empires. Stoler does not relegate imperial
9
Ullman, Le mal aimé, 311-314, 332-338.
Ann Laura Stoler, “Intimidations of Empire: Predicaments of the Tactile and Unseen” and “Tense and
Tender Ties: The Politics of Comparison in North American History and (Post) Colonial Studies,” in Ann
Laura Stoler, ed. Haunted By Empire: Geographies of Intimacy in North American History (Durham and
London: Duke University Press, 2006), 3-65; Ann Laura Stoler and Carole McGranahan, “Introduction:
Refiguring Imperial Terrains,” and “Provincializing France,” Donald Cooper in Ann Laura Stoler, Carole
McGranahan and Peter C. Perdue, Imperial Formations (School for Advanced Research Advanced
Seminar Series Santa Fe, N.M and Oxford England: School for Advanced Research Press; James Currey,
2007), 8, 10, 363-367.
11
Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), 140, 247-8, 256, 278.
10
10
comparisons to the past. She challenges the community of historians to compare nations,
regions and eras. Stoler contends that such inquiries might prove most illuminating in the
area of comparative studies of indigenous-settler relations in the developed world: “The
interior frontiers of the nation-state, as evinced in the treaties with the Native Americans,
were as dependent on colonial relations of dominance as were any of Europe’s external
incursions.”12
In addition to Stoler and her colleagues in post-colonial studies, this dissertation
has been influenced by a consideration of comparative history. Works by thinkers such as
Michael Adas, James C. Scott and Charles Tilly have assisted in understanding the
ambitions and limits of large scale policy initiatives such as post-confederation Canadian
Indian policy and France’s conquest and administration of Algeria in a comparative light.13
Other studies that involve comparison in the Americas by Jeremy Adelman, Florencia E.
Mallon, Cynthia Murrieta Radding, Carl E. Solberg and Camilla Townsend have been
influential in grasping the potential of placing Duncan Campbell Scott and Canada into
juxtaposition with Jacques Soustelle and France.14
Stoler, “Intimidations of Empire,” 12.
Michael Adas, Prophets of Rebellion: Millenarian Protest Movements Against the European Colonial
Order (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979); James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How
Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition have Failed (New Haven Conn. ; London: Yale
University Press, 1998); Charles Tilly, Big Structures, Large Processes, Huge Comparisons (New York:
Russell Sage Foundation, 1984).
14
Jeremy Adelman, Frontier Development : Land, Labour, and Capital on the Wheatlands of Argentina
and Canada, 1890-1914 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994); Florencia E. Mallon, Peasant and Nation : The
Making of Postcolonial Mexico and Peru (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995); Cynthia
Murrieta Radding, Landscapes of Power and Identity : Comparative Histories in the Sonoran Desert and
the Forests of Amazonia from Colony to Republic (Durham N.C.: Duke University Press, 2005); Carl
E.Solberg, The Prairies and the Pampas: Agrarian Policy in Canada and Argentina, 1880-1930 (Stanford,
Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1987); Camilla Townsend, Tales of Two Cities: Race and Economic
Culture in Early Republican North and South America: Guayaquil, Ecuador, and Baltimore, Maryland
(Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000).
12
13
11
Duncan Campbell Scott and Jacques Soustelle were both among ‘the best and
brightest’ of their generations.15 David Halberstam coined that phrase in reference to the
senior bureaucrats and military officers advising American Presidents John F. Kennedy
and Lyndon B Johnson over the Viet Nam War. Scott and Soustelle were also members
of elites that shared general convictions, in Scott’s case about Canadian Indian policy,
and, in Soustelle’s, about France’s role in Algeria. Further, both men were preoccupied
with Indigenous peoples in their bureaucratic/political work and their intellectual
production.
This dissertation is concerned with the failures of Canadian, French and Mexican
liberalism in the governance of Indigenous peoples. In juxtaposing Scott and Soustelle, it
sheds light on the inheritance of English and French imperialism and the nature of
liberalism in Canada and France. How could the indigenismo of post-revolutionary
Mexico inspire Jacques Soustelle in an effort to reform a colonial system that had been in
place for 125 years? Why has the settler nation Canada failed so miserably to provide
justice and economic opportunity for Indigenous Canadians? The juxtaposition of
Duncan Campbell Scott and Jacques Soustelle provides a coherent historical means to
consider these questions.
The shadow of the Algerian - French conflict, in which Soustelle played a central
role, is apparent to this day in film, history, journalism and political studies, particularly
throughout the French-speaking world. French military and diplomatic efforts in Algeria,
Libya and Mali have the whiff of the challenges faced by Jacques Soustelle in North
15
David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest (New York: Random House, 1972). Journalist Halberstam
coined the phrase ‘the best and the brightest’ in his consideration of the liberals who contributed to a series
of fateful decisions to ramp up the United States military presence in Viet Nam.
12
Africa of the 1950s and 1960s.16 Similarly, Canadians are subjected almost daily to the
persistent nagging on the national conscience, historical memory and politics by
unresolved conundrums of Aboriginal rights. For example, studies published in early
2013 revealed thousands of deaths in former Indian residential schools and current
systemic discrimination against Aboriginals in the Canadian justice system; also, a
decision of the Supreme Court of Canada revealed that the federal government had failed
its constitutional duties in dealing with the Manitoba Métis in the nineteenth century.17
Research for this dissertation has been conducted at archives, historical sites and
libraries in Canada, France and Mexico. It relies on the primary writings of Scott and
Sosutelle in their books, essays, print journalism, correspondence, administrative papers
and the photographs they took. The research also involved carefully screening films, both
fiction and non-fiction, along with the hours of news or documentary footage and
archival radio broadcasts in which they participated, or that touch upon their lives and
work. The dissertation considers the intellectual tradition and milieux that formed each
man through anthropology, ethnology, history, philosophy and ‘post-colonial’ literature.
The scars of empire can be found in landscapes, literature, archives, documentary film
making and the daily news in newspapers, on radio and on television.
See Olivier Zajec, « Au Mali, l’inusable refrain de la guerre au terrorisme, » Le Monde diplomatique, No
707 – 60ème année. Février 2013, page 1; Yahia Belaskri et Elisabeth Lesne, eds, ALGÉRIES 50, (Paris :
Magellan et Cie – Cité nationale de l’histoire de l’immigration, 2012).
17
Colin Perkel, The Canadian Press, “At least 3,000 native children died in residential schools: research,”
The Globe And Mail, February 18, 2013; Joe Friesen, “NORTHERN ONTARIO Justice system for natives
‘in a crisis’,” The Globe And Mail, February 27, 2013, page A8; Tanya Talaga, “ONTARIO JUSTICE
SYTEM REVIEW First Nations face ‘systemic racism’,” The Toronto Star, February 27, 2013, front page;
“FIRST NATIONS AND JURIES Rebuild trust in the law,” The Toronto Star, February 27, 2013, lead
editorial, page A18; Bruce Campion-Smith, “Watchdog blasts surge in aboriginal prisoners,” The Toronto
Star, March 8, 2013, front page; “ABORIGINAL OFFENDERS Justice must include hope,” The Toronto
Star, March 8, 2013, lead editorial, page A22; Gloria Galloway, “After 140 years and review of 2000
documents, Métis win historic land claim,” The Globe And Mail, March 8, 2013, front page; Steve Rennie,
The Canadian Press, “Supreme Court sides with Metis in historic land claim dispute,” The Toronto Star,
March 8, 2013, Canadian national news section.
16
13
Edward W. Said’s method of carefully analyzing literature in light of imperialism
has influenced my way of thinking about the writings of Scott and Soustelle.18 Said’s
consideration of Albert Camus, the French Algerian novelist, philosopher and political
activist, is particularly relevant to this inquiry.19 This dissertation examines the extent to
which Camus and Soustelle shared a vision of a cooperative future for l’Algérie française
and how Soustelle’s determination as Governor General to pursue a military victory over
Algerian rebels divided them.
Canadian historian Ian McKay’s pivotal work has shaped the conversation about
Canadian liberalism for more than a decade.20 His perspective influences the analysis of
Scott in this work. McKay has insisted on the primacy of federal Canadian Indian policy
as a barometer of what he calls Canada’s “liberal order framework.”21 McKay puts liberal
ideology in a Canadian context in describing how an elite group of English and French
Canadian males put their stamp on the country in the first half century of Canadian
confederation. The liberal order framework described by MacKay prioritized ideas about
private property, natural resource based economic development and individual rights
within severe limits. McKay demonstrates that group and individual rights of Aboriginal
peoples were placed outside the parameters of the supposedly universalist principals of
Canada’s political founders. McKay emphasizes Indian policy and western expansion as
18
Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1979); Said, Culture And Imperialism (New
York: Vintage Books, 1994).
19
Said, Orientalism, 312-313; Said, Culture, xxvii, 71, 78, 146, 174-185, 208-209, 259.
20
Ian McKay, "The Liberal Order Framework: A Prospectus for a Reconnaissance of Canadian History."
Canadian Historical Review 81, no. 4 (Dec. 2000): 617.; Ian McKay, “Canada as a Long Liberal
Revolution” in Liberalism and Hegemony: Debating the Canadian Liberal Revolution, ed. by JeanFrançois Constant and Michel Ducharme (Toronto-Buffalo-London: University of Toronto Press, 2009);
Ian McKay, Rebels, reds, radicals: re-thinking Canada’s Left History (Toronto: Between The Lines,
2005);Ian McKay, Thinking Otherwise: Leftists and the People’s Enlightenment in Canada, 1890-1920
(Toronto: Between The Lines, 2008).
21
McKay, “The Liberal Order,” 636; McKay, Rebels, 89.
14
critical planks of his liberal framework. McKay’s writing about Duncan Campbell Scott
has influenced the way this dissertation strives to fathom the meaning of the bureaucrat
and artist Scott, in the history of Canadian Indian policy.22
The American historian of Guatemala Greg Grandin argues that throughout Latin
America liberal and conservative politicians, military officers and capitalists bent on
modernity, often working in close cooperation with the United States, consistently
undermined founding principals of American democracy throughout much of the
twentieth century.23 Grandin often interweaves historical analysis with an
acknowledgement of present day outcomes.24 In this way, his methodology and concerns
as an historian of Latin American are applicable to the Canadian history of Aboriginalsettler relations because of the urgency of the issue on the Canadian national agenda.
Grandin also delineates the transnational influence of the Mexican Revolution on
social activists and revolutionaries. 25 His emphatic assertion regarding the centrality of
the Mexican experience to leftists in places such as Chile, Cuba and Guatemala in the
decades following the revolution echoes the impact the Revolution and its indigenista
politics had on the young French intellectual, Jacques Soustelle in the 1930s. Further,
Grandin’s contemplation of the international impact on activists, intellectuals and artists
of Mexico’s revolution is comparable to the period after 1962 when the legacy of the
Algerian-French conflict weighed not only on French intellectuals such as Soustelle, but
McKay, “Canada as a Long Liberal Revolution,” 353-361, 381.
Greg Grandin, Empire’s Workshop Latin America, the United States, and the rise of the new imperialism
(New York: Metropolitan/Owl Books, 2007); Greg Grandin, The Last Colonial Massacre: Latin America in
the Cold War (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 178.
24
Grandin, The Blood of Guatemala: a history of race and nation (Durham, NC and London, UK: Duke
University Press, 2000), 1-5, 220-236.
25
Grandin, Colonial Massacre, 174-175.
22
23
15
also on an entire galaxy of thinkers, activists and artists throughout the ‘post-colonial’
world.
A few reflections regarding style and approach are useful at this point. This is not
an overly experimental work. It is a primarily a dissertation in text. It also features
stylistic elements which reflect both the subject matter and my professional story-telling
experience – experience that often relates directly to the concerns of this dissertation.26
While respecting the academic milieu and discipline in which this work resides, my style
and approach consciously reflects my complementary professional formation. This
dissertation aims to encourage the reader to think deeply about Scott and Soustelle. The
reader will sometimes encounter longish passages of Scott’s poetry or excerpts from the
work of Jacques Soustelle. These are deliberate choices. There is an overarching,
cumulative analytical framework that supports the reader while eliciting her/his wonder
about the precise meaning of Scott’s and Soustelle’s work. As for Scott’s poetry, the
dissertation does not presume to perfectly understand his interior process or meaning.
Poetry is art. It is susceptible to divergent, yet equally valid, interpretations. That is part
of its function. This dissertation situates Scott’s poetry in its place and time and
ruminates on its meaning and suggests how the perceived value of Scott’s work has
shifted within audiences over time.
The dissertation features some images. The photographs and graphics are selected
to enhance the reader’s understanding and curiosity. Some of the photographs are by
Scott or Soustelle. Their relevance is apparent within the context of the dissertation.
There are also photographs that I have taken in France, Mexico and Ontario between
26
Cullingham, The Poet and the Indians cited in Stan Dragland, Floating Voice: Duncan Campbell Scott
and the Literature of Treaty 9 (Concord, ON: Anansi Press, 1994), ix; Mark Abley, Conversations with a
Dead Man – The Legacy of Duncan Campbell Scott (McGill University Press, Montréal, 2013), 142-3.
16
1994 and 2010. At times these photos are used to jerk the reader’s mind into the present.
As both historian and journalist, I do not believe that history is purely a matter of the
past. History motivates individuals and animates societies. The abiding concerns and
work of Duncan Campbell Scott and Jacques Soustelle are meaningful in Algeria,
Canada, France, Mexico and other parts of the world today. The dissertation serves at
times as an invitation to think about the current political meaning of history.
This work is concerned with the formative perceptions of post-revolutionary
Mexico drawn by Jacques Soustelle as a French graduate student and as a representative
of the Gaullist resistance to Nazism while living in Mexico between 1932 and 1941. It is
focused on Soustelle’s perceptions regarding the meaning and intent of postrevolutionary indigenismo and various social and political reform policies of Mexican
governments of the day. He brought with him a formation from the French academy and
he applied his understanding primarily within French academic and political arenas.
Almost a quarter of a century after first setting foot in Mexico, Soustelle became
Governor General of Algeria. He brought with him convictions about reform that
stemmed to a significant degree from his experiences and studies in Mexico. This
dissertation is concerned with his work and that of Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre,
Germaine Tillion, Tzvetan Todorov and a number of other authorities on colonialism and
social sciences that speak to ways of thinking about imperialism, post-colonialism and
the Algerian question.
The work at hand juxtaposes two individuals near the centre of power in Canada
and France as their countries were preoccupied with and transformed by questions
concerning the lives of Indigenous peoples. In different ways, concerns about Indigenous
17
peoples were often the subject of the artistic and/or intellectual output of Scott and
Soustelle. This work is relevant because these issues remain present day concerns for
Canada and France.
There are some terms that appear frequently in the text. Liberalism suggests a set
of beliefs that favour private property, individual rights, representative democracy and a
secular state. Liberalism also contains severe contradictions and exceptions to each of
these values.27 Republicanism has specific meanings in the French context. Generally it
signifies the end of monarchism and the installation of civil rights of all citizens and
representative, secular democracy. Jacques Soustelle lived and worked during the Third,
Fourth and Fifth French republics. The Third Republic crumbled with its defeat by Nazi
Germany in June 1940. Soustelle began his political career in the Fourth Republic after
France’s liberation. He helped usher in the Fifth Republic under the presidency of
Charles de Gaulle in a failed bid to salvage l’Algérie française.28 Indigenismo has shifting
meaning in Mexican history beginning in the late nineteenth century during the rule of
Porfirio Díaz. This dissertation talks of the indigenismo encountered by Jacques Soustelle
in his first extended stays in the country between 1932 and 1941. This activist set of
reform policies, promoted by intellectuals such as the anthropologist Manuel Gamio, who
welcomed Soustelle to Mexico, aimed at reintegrating Indians into a mixed Mexican
27
See for example Domenico Losurdo, Contre-Histoire Du Libéralisme [Controstoria del liberalismo]
Translated by Bernard Chamayou (Paris: Éditions de La découverte, 2013), 9-46; Mehta, Uday Singh,
“Liberal Strategies of Exclusion,” in Frederick Cooper and Ann Laura Stoler, Tensions of Empire: Colonial
Cultures in a Bourgeois World (Berkeley and Los Angeles : University of California Press, 1997), 59-86 ;
Jennifer Pitts, A Turn to Empire: The Rise of Imperial Liberalism in Britain and France (Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, 2005), 189-195, 204-239.
28
Bernard Ullmann, Jacques Soustelle le mal aimé (Paris: Plon, 1995), 241-264.
18
society.29 Its complex and, at times, contradictory ambition was to simultaneously reform
and celebrate the culture of Mexican Indians while absorbing or assimilating them into
the Mexican mestizo mainstream.
The dissertation begins with “Two Dead White Men,” a chapter which is
dedicated to the essentials of each man’s biography and an examination of how their
stature and reputation has shifted over time. The following chapter, “Their Journey In,”
examines transformative journeys by each man – Scott to northern Ontario as a federal
Canadian Treaty Commissioner in 1905-6 and Soustelle to Mexico to conduct his
doctoral research in 1932-36. “Burden of Empire” then juxtaposes the influence of
British imperial policy on the domestic colonialism of post-Confederation Canada with
the legacy of French liberal imperial policies on the ideology that guided Soustelle after
World War II. “Arts and Science” juxtaposes Scott’s foundational role in Canadian
literature and cultural nationalism with Soustelle’s contribution to the development of
French ethnology and its public diffusion in the twentieth century. The penultimate
chapter “Politics” examines the record of each man under intense political and media
scrutiny – Scott as the Canadian Indian Department’s leading representative during a
period of increasingly draconian policies of assimilation in the 1920s and Soustelle as
Governor General of l’Algérie française during the war of independence. The dissertation
concludes with a meditation on the ethical and psychological complications regarding
Scott’s role in Indian policy and a reconsideration of the place of Soustelle in the
pantheon of French intellectuals concerned with l’Algérie française.
29
Jacques Soustelle letter to Paul Rivet, November 30, 1932, MNHN; Claudio Lomnitz Adler, Deep
Mexico, Silent Mexico: An Anthropology of Nationalism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
2001), 250-7.
19
This dissertation contemplates the shifting meaning of the lives of Duncan
Campbell Scott and Jacques Soustelle. How was each man representative of his society
and especially its intellectual trajectory and its imperial/colonial pretensions? The prism
of Scott and Soustelle’s fascination and inquietudes over Indigenousness reveals much
about the intellectual history and essential national identities of Canada and France. In a
multicultural Canada and with France in a federated Europe, both now engaged with a
“globalized” twenty-first century world, their struggles have much to teach us.
20
2. Two Dead White Men
Introduction
Duncan Campbell Scott and Jacques Soustelle are thorns in the historic memories
of their nations. As both a literary artist and bureaucrat, Scott was frequently lauded in his
lifetime. In the twenty-first century, Scott is frequently associated with the worst aspects of
Canadian Indian policy. Until mid-career, Soustelle was regarded in a positive light by the
French as an academic prodigy, a hero of the resistance and an able politician. With
his fateful turn as Governor General of Algeria in 1955 Soustelle became a figure of
controversy and notoriety.
Scott and Soustelle incarnated the intellectual, cultural and ideological firmament
of Canada and France during their lifetimes. Crucially for this inquiry they also shared a
lifelong preoccupation with Indigenous peoples who were principal unifying subjects of
their work both as political men and as public intellectuals. In contemplating Scott and
Soustelle simultaneously, one observes them wondering about, investigating, writing
powerful works about and administering Indigenous peoples from the Canadian arctic,
across Canada’s boreal expanses, to the rainforest of Chiapas, Mexico, to the deserts and
remotest mountains of north Africa. This transpired from that day in 1879 when John A.
Macdonald, Canada’s first prime minister, hired Scott to work in the Indian Department,
until the death of esteemed ethnologist and notorious political maverick Jacques Soustelle
was extensively reported in all major French national newspapers and on radio and
television networks in the summer of 1990. This shared absorption with the “native” as
seen through dual prisms of Scott’s and Soustelle’s lives and work provides a point of
21
comparison for the profound influence of imperial, colonial and post-colonial thought and
political action in both Canada and France during the modern era.
Scott
Scott was the intellectual offspring of a new nation. A parson’s son, he grew up in
various small towns in Canada East and West before his family settled in a parsonage
within walking distance from Canada’s Parliament Hill. In 1879, when he was seventeen
he was hired by Prime Minister John A. Macdonald as a clerk in the Indian Department.
Scott’s father William, who had preached among the Aboriginal peoples on Manitoulin
Island during his travels, was MacDonald’s friend. The Prime Minister was happy to help
the boy get a start:
I shall have great pleasure in helping your son to a position in the public service at
an early day. No one deserves more at my hands than a son of yours. Please let me
know his age, what his previous pursuits have been and let him send me a specimen
of his handwriting.1
Duncan Campbell Scott would spend his entire civil service career there from 1879 until
1932 when he retired from the Department. He would move on from his junior clerical
status to act as Treaty Commissioner, head of Indian education and ultimately Deputy
Superintendent General, the Department’s highest civil service rank, from 1913-1932. As
a civil servant Scot was strategically placed to develop, refine and implement Canadian
Indian policy. The policy in its critical late nineteenth - through early twentieth -century
phase was a direct descendant of a cluster of British colonial policies, which a fledgling
John A. MacDonald, letter of November 14, 1879 to William Scott. As cited in Arthur S. Bourinot “The
Poet’s Scrapbooks” The Canadian Bookman and Author, Vol. 38, No. 1, Summer, Ottawa.1962, 6;
“Ottawa’s Grand Old Poet Shows His Rare Gifts” The Ottawa Journal, June 21, 1947. In an interview six
months prior to his death, Scott recounted the circumstances of his being hired by MacDonald more than
sixty years earlier.
1
22
Canada inherited from imperial Britain at Confederation in 1867. 2The new nation would
take those imperial policies and harden them in determined pursuit of a national railway,
settler colonization and exploitation of natural resources in what King George III had
called “the Indian country”.3 Scott was the single most influential non-elected official
responsible for these policies for a quarter of a century.
Scott’s artistic production is sometimes reviled, or simply ignored, by many
observers of the settler – Aboriginal relationship in Canada from the latter part of the
twentieth century until the present day. Scott was, in fact, an extremely accomplished
poet, writer of short stories, musician and essayist according to his contemporaries as
well as some present-day literary scholars. Scott was both a path-breaking artist and a
civil servant of gravitas engaged in some of the nastiest business that Canada has ever
required of one of its mandarins. Author Stan Dragland addressed the conundrum Scott
poses for Canadian historians and cultural critics in my 1995 documentary film,
What is the problem? The problem is that this man who was almost wholly
admirable in so many respects… whose poetry I deeply admire…who was in
some ways the first truly indigenous poet of Canada…that’s a funny word to use
for someone who was responsible for policies that were deeply harmful to
Indigenous peoples…but it’s true. He wrote some great poems and many of them
are about Indian people or the north. This man, who if you could just shave off the
Indian Department aspect would be wholly admirable, was also the bureaucrat
most responsible for a policy of assimilation.4
2
Olive Patricia Dickason, Canada’s First Nations: A History of Founding Peoples from Earliest Times
(Toronto: McLelland & Stewart, 1992), 247-56; J.R. Miller, Compact, Contract, Covenant: Aboriginal
Treaty-Making in Canada (Toronto-Buffalo-London: University of Toronto Press, 2009), 66-122; E. Brian
Titley, A Narrow Vision: Duncan Campbell Scott and the Administration of Indian Affairs in Canada,
(Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1986), 1-22.
3
Royal Proclamation, October 7, 1763. Websource: http://www.johnco.com/nativel/pro1763.html
(accessed January 2013).
4
Stan Dragland. Duncan Campbell Scott: The Poet and the Indians, documentary film directed by the
author. Tamarack Productions in co-production with The National Film Board of Canada, 1995. Dragland
is a literary critic, novelist and a former professor of English literature at the University of Western Ontario.
Stan Dragland’s Floating Voice: Duncan Campbell Scott and the Literature of Treaty 9 (Concord, ON:
Anansi, 1994) is an erudite, multidisciplinary contemplation of Scott as a poet and Treaty Commissioner.
23
Some recall that Scott would write poems by pencil as he traveled Canada by canoe and
train on Indian Department business. Scott often wrote about Indians, the Canadian
frontier and what he regarded as the necessary struggle to impress the values of British
civilization on a sometimes brutish, backward Canada. He wrote convincingly of nature
in Canada. Some literary critics claim that he and his friend Archibald Lampman were
among the first post-Confederation writers to achieve full poetic realization of the
specific haunting power and beauty of the flora and fauna of Canada.5
Scott’s Indian poems can startle and disturb imbued as they often, but not always,
are with a transparent ideology rooted in firm convictions about once noble, but now
vanishing peoples. An early poem written before Scott had risen high in the Departmental
ranks reveals a profound conviction about how Canadian indigenous peoples were
‘doomed races’,
The race has waned and left but tales of ghosts,
That hover in the world like fading smoke
About the lodges: gone are the dusky folk
That once were cunning with the thong and snare
And mighty with the paddle and the bow;
They lured the silver salmon from his lair,
They drove the buffalo in trampling hosts,
And gambled in the tepees until dawn,
But now their vaunted prowess is gone,
Gone like a moose-track in the April snow.6
The complex relationship between Scott’s bureaucratic career and his artistic
production is clear in one respect: Scott the artist mined his ‘day job’ for artistic
5
Douglas Lochead, “Preface,” in Powassan’s Drum: Poems of Duncan Campbell Scott (Ottawa: Tecumseh
Press, 1985), xii; Gordon Johnston, Duncan Campbell Scott and His Works (Downsview, ON: ECW Press,
1983), 10, 26.
6
Duncan Campbell Scott, “Indian Place Names”, Selected Poetry of Duncan Campbell Scott, edited by
Glenn Clever (Ottawa: Tecumseh Press, 1974), 36; originally published in Scott’s New World Lyrics and
Ballads, (Toronto: Morang, 1905).
24
inspiration. His contemporaries took note of Scott struggling to balance bureaucratic duty
with artistic impulse. Scott’s friend Madge Macbeth, an Ottawa society columnist,
remembered his unique approach to the business of Parliament,
With a highly-trained, efficient and devoted staff – Indian Affairs was not one of
the Government’s most exacting departments – Duncan had quite a little leisure
during office hours. He did not suppress his artistic impulses at these times, but
worked leisurely on his practice piano. It must have startled a new employee to
enter his office and find him absorbed not in files or Blue Books, but in working
on a soundless keyboard.7
The quality of the work and its stature in the development of Canadian literature
raise thorny problems for the intellectual historian. In the present day, the intent of
Canadian Indian policy during Scott’s tenure in the Department appears at best
misguided, and at worst implemented with murderous, even genocidal, consequences.
Scott was a vaunted national figure in his own lifetime. He was widely respected as both
a significant Canadian artist, one of a handful of men thought responsible for the very
invention of a specifically Canadian body of poetry actually worth reading, and at the
same time admired for his untiring efforts to civilize Canada’s Indians.
7
Madge Macbeth, Over My Shoulder (Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1953), 143; Macbeth, “Duncan Campbell
Scott - A Few of My Memories,” Canadian Author and Bookman, Vol. 38, No. 1, Summer 1962, 2.
25
Figure 3 Duncan Campbell Scott c.1885 (courtesy John Aylen - DC Scott Estate)
Scott was not merely a late Victorian racist. He represented values that were
widely held in Canada. As cultural critics Margaret Atwood, Northrop Frye and John
Ralston Saul have argued, Scott and his peers incarnated a set of attitudes about Canada’s
relationship with Britain, the Mother Country and the obligations of supposedly civilizing
a new nation’s human inheritance : wards in the form of Native peoples subservient to a
semi-independent Canada.8 With the residential schools he administered, with the
oppressive policies on Indian dances, languages, political organizations and spirituality
that Parliament charged him to enforce, Scott was a central figure behind Canadian
8
Margaret Atwood, Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature (Toronto: House of Anansi Press,
1972),60 ; Northrop Frye, The Bush Garden: Essays on the Canadian Imagination (Toronto, House of
Anansi Press, 1971), 132, 145; John Ralston Saul, A Fair Country: Telling Truths About Canada (Toronto:
Viking Canada, 2008), 84-5, 231-38, 257. See also Carl Berger, The Sense of Power: Studies in the Ideas of
Canadian Imperialism, 1867-1914 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1970), 116-19; Carl Berger, “the
true north strong and free.” in Peter H. Russell Nationalism in Canada (Toronto: McGraw-Hill, 1966), 326.
26
policies directed at Indigenous peoples. This tension is equally apparent in his artistic
production. Duncan Campbell Scott is a troubling character for the Canadian collective
conscience.
Scott retired as deputy superintendant general of Indian Affairs in 1932. He spent
the remainder of his life writing at his home on Lisgar Avenue near Parliament Hill,
traveling with his second wife, the poet Elise Aylen, and remaining in steady contact with
Canada’s writers, publishers, journalists and visual artists including Emily Carr, Group of
Seven member Lawren Harris and the Québécois painter Clarence Gagnon.9 On the
occasion of his eightieth birthday, the venerable poet and champion of Canadian artistic
life was saluted in the national press. Saturday Night magazine reported,
On August 2 Duncan Campbell Scott passes his eightieth milestone and walks
into the eighty-first year of life as rich in work nobly done as any life ever lived in
Canada.
He has been a great giver and a great lover - a great lover of beauty and a
great giver of beauty, a great lover of Canada and a great giver to Canada. He has
known great sorrows but they have been transformed into great pities.
The reputation which he made as an administrator still remains. He
brought human and humane understanding to the problems of the Indian wards of
the federal government.
His work gave him many opportunities to travel through this broad land.
No one has ever wandered with eyes that saw more or ears that heard more, for he
knows every bird song, every flower, every landscape, he hears the clang of
ancient battles, the tenderness of the Indian legend and the throb of the drums of
war.
It is right that we should salute those among us who share the proud
position of a Duncan Campbell Scott. It is right that we should hail them often
before we say farewell. It is right that we should honor him to this day and
always, because as long as trilliums whiten and maples redden, as long as the
crocus empurples the prairie and lupins mirror the sky and dogwood puts forth her
stars, many who love Canada and the glories and changing beauty of her lakes,
9
Duncan Campbell Scott, letter to E.K. Brown, May 10-12, 1944. LAC-BAC, E.K. Brown correspondence
MG30 D61 Vol. 3; Emily Carr letter to Scott and Elise Aylen, March 22, 1941. LAC-BAC, LMS-0204,
Box 10, Folder 31; Scott letters to Clarence Gagnon, February 8, 1919, August 2 & 6, 1921 and December
1, 1927. LAC-BAC, LMS-0204, Box 11; Clarence Gagnon letter to Scott, June 6, 1931. LAC-BAC, LMS0204, Box 11.
27
her meadows, her mountains, her skies and her snows, will hold the memory of
Duncan Campbell Scott in pride.10
When he died in 1947 at the age 85, many leading newspapers and magazines
deemed Scott to be Canada’s unofficial poet laureate. Further, Scott was not merely a
Canadian literary figure. Within two months of his death Britain’s poet laureate John
Masefield led a memorial service in Scott’s honor at St. Martin’s in the Field Cathedral in
London. Masefield had a long association with Scott. He claimed that The Piper of Arll, an
early Scott poem about a haunted ship, had encouraged him, then a dockworker in
New York, to write poetry. Some four decades prior to the St. Martin’s ceremony,
Masefield had written a letter of gratitude to Scott,
I hardly hope that you will remember my name, … Ten years ago, when I was in
America, as a factory hand near NY, I read “The Piper of Arll” in the Christmas
number of a paper called “Truth”. I had never (till that time) cared very much for
poetry, but your poem impressed me deeply, and set me on fire.11
At the St. Martin-In-The-Fields memorial, Masefield returned the favour to Scott as he
paid tribute to a man Masefield characterized as a great poet and humanitarian who
understood and sympathized with the lot of Canada’s Indigenous peoples. From his
British vantage point, Masefield idealized Scott’s vision of the Canadian landscape and
its presumably primeval occupants,
When Duncan Campbell Scott began to write, the wish of the younger
men was to declare the Canadian scene, with its greatness of mountain, lake, river
and forest; its wildness; the fierce and eager dwellers in the wild, whether animal
or men, and the exhiliration of being young in a land where poverty did not exist,
where a new way of life was beginning, without the follies, the fetters and feuds
of Europe.
To be young in such a land at such a time was very Heaven.
Leonard W. Brockington, “Duncan Campbell Scott’s Eightieth Birthday” Saturday Night, Vol. 57, No
47, (August 1, 1942).
11
John Masefield. Letter to DC Scott, November 8, 1905. LAC-BAC, LMS 0204 Box 11, Folder 26.
10
28
He entered the Department of Indian Affairs, in which Service his active
life was passed. In this service, he came to know many Indians, to understand
them, to see something of what could be done to save them from the evils the
white men have brought to them.
He was deeply impressed by many of them. Admiration is a great help to
understanding. In his poems and stories about them, we are brought, perhaps for
the very first time to a living knowledge of what they are: a race that has learned
to live the terrible northern winters, that can endure any thing that nature can
bring, that can run the rapids in canoes, and run down the antelopes upon the
prairie, that has ever a natural dignity, and has, as Man, always something of the
beauty, the grace and the wildness of an animal, and will ever cling to that
wildness, and shew it, when moved.
Many white men, and some white women, have tasted that wildness, and
come to prefer it to anything tamer. There are those primitive fires in all of us. On
the Canadian frontiers they give a passion to the national life.
Scott saw this, and portrayed it in some of the very best of our Canadian
poetry and prose. He was a hopeful man, living in a young land about to flower in
all the lovely ways of the humanities. He hoped for, and foresaw, a Canada great
in all the arts; and saw, too, that that great land would be sublime, when called
upon, in the splendour and sacrifice of great causes.
As one who loved his work, and owe much to him, I ask you to think of
him with gladness and gratitude.12
As the Memorial proceeded, Canadian expatriates read primarily from Scott’s Indian
canon including Watkwenies, a poem about an Indian elder,
Vengeance was once her nation’s lore and law:
When the tired sentry stooped above the rill,
Her long knife flashed, and hissed, and drank its fill;
Dimly below her dripping wrist she saw,
One wild hand, pale as death and weak as straw,
Clutch at the ripple in the pool; while shrill
Sprang through the hamlet on the hill,
The war-cry of the triumphant Iroquois.13
In Watkwenies, one of Scott’s earliest ‘Indian’ poems Scott reveals a morbid
fascination with traits of a ‘vanishing’ race. Few of Scott’s poems portray native peoples
in transition, at least in the sort of positive, material progression that he took for granted
John Masefield, “Address” D.C. Scott Memorial, January 22, 1948, St.Martin-In-The-Fields, London.
Aylen-DC Scott fonds, LMS – 0204 Box 10, Folder 4.
13
Duncan Campbell Scott, “Watkwenies”, originally published in Scott’s Labor and the Angel, (Boston:
Copeland and Day, 1898) , 15; cited in Scott, ed. Cleaver, Selected Poetry, 13.
12
29
for European Canadians. Watkwenies also depicts an exchange between the Indian
woman and an Indian agent, the field representative of the government department where
Scott spent his civil service career. The poem might refer to a Treaty signing or an annual
commemorative Treaty day in the bush of northern Ontario or on the Canadian prairies at
which Indians would receive token payments as a symbol of their relationship with
Canada. Scott had first hand experience as commissioner for Treaty 9 in 1905-1906
which took him on long trips between Lake Superior and the coast of James Bay in
northern Ontario. Scott believed such transactions were fulcrum points in the taming of
wild Indians into civilized Canadians.14
The Forsaken, a poem about a woman left abandoned to die in a snowstorm by
her starving tribe, was also proffered to those assembled in the venerable British church.
Perhaps it seemed a fitting choice to Masefield because of its exotic portrayal of harsh
Canadian conditions and its poetic empathy with a woman with an ill infant,
I
Once in the winter
Out on a lake
In the heart of the north-land
Far from the Fort
And far from the hunters,
A Chippewa woman
With her sick baby,
Crouched in the last hours
Of a great storm. Frozen and hungry,
She fished through the ice
With a line of the twisted
Bark of the cedar,
And a rabbit-bone hook
Polished and barbed;
Duncan Campbell Scott “The Last of The Indian Treaties” originally published 1906 Scribner’s 40
(1906); re-printed in DC Scott The Circle of Affection (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1947), 109-22;
and in Duncan Campbell Scott: Addresses, Essay and Reviews, Vol.1, Leslie Ritchie, ed, Introduction by
Stan Dragland (London,ON; Canadian Poetry Press, 2000),82-93; Dragland, Floating Voice: Duncan
Campbell Scott and the Literature of Treaty 9 (Concord, ON: Anansi,1994).
14
30
Fished with the bare hook
All through the wild day,
Fished and caught nothing;
While the young chieftain
Tugged at her breasts,
Or slept in the lacings of the warm tikinagan
All the lake-surface
Streamed with the hissing of iceflakes,
Hurled by the wind;
Behind her the round
Of a lonely island
Roared like a fire
With the voice of a storm
In the depths of the cedars.
Valiant, unshaken,
She took her own flesh,
Baited the fish-hook,
Drew in a grey trout,
Drew in his fellows,
Heaped them beside her,
Dead in the snow.
Valiant, unshaken,
She faced the long distance,
Wolf-haunted and lonely,
Sure of her goal
And the life of her dear one;15
Scott encountered children in tikinagans, the distinctive Ojibwe and Cree cradleboards of
the boreal region, in his lengthy Treaty voyages of 1905-6. The Forsaken was a dramatic
choice for Masefield to make at the Scott memorial service. At its conclusion, the
Aboriginal woman incapable of traveling on, is left to die by her starving people on an
island in the course of a great snowstorm. Scott drew attention to what he considered
barbaric Aboriginal practices, the remedy for which was Canadian civilization
administered by the Indian Department, a lofty and humane goal in the eyes of Scott,
Masefield and the audience gathered at St. Martin’s for the memorial.
15
Duncan Campbell Scott, “The Forsaken”, originally published in New World Lyrics and Ballads
(Toronto: Morang, 1905), 15; cited in Scott, ed. Cleaver, Selected Poetry, 37.
31
In a letter written to Scott’s second wife, the young poet and playwright Elise
Aylen, who did not attend the London ceremony, Masefield wrote about “a service for
your husband in a church famous here for the keeping of memories of great men… Miss
Robinson who is, I think, the best living speaker of verse, made The Forsaken a living
experience…nothing more beautiful has been done here…”16 At the service Masefield
also read from a message from Canada’s Prime Minister, “Much of his work we believe
will find an enduring place in the vaster field of English literature. For all who love
nature he has mirrored the Canadian scene in its varying aspects of tender loveliness and
rugged beauty.”17 As Aylen made her way through Ceylon and India where she would
eventually settle, she granted a newspaper an interview about her husband. In its tribute
to Scott, The Times of Ceylon called him, “the uncrowned poet laureate of Canada” and
stated that he was “…one of the few Canadians to receive international recognition in the
field of literature.”18 In both England and India, Scott’s stature as a fixture of an emergent
Canadian literature was duly noted at the time of his death. In the press accounts there is
simply no concern about the merits of Canadian Indian policy. Scott was seen as a noble
example of an artist and servant of the Canadian government and British empire.
At his British memorial, the last selection read was from Scott’s Fragment Of An
Ode To Canada. The poem from 1911, when Scott was achieving high ranking in the
Canadian civil service, evokes a nationalism imbued with attachment to Britain.
THIS is the land!
It lies outstretched a vision of delight,
16
Times of Ceylon, December 29, 1948. LAC-BAC E. Aylen-DC Scott fonds, LMS – 0204 Box 9, Folder
8
W.L. Mackenzie King, “Message” on the occasion of D.C Scott Memorial, Office Of The High
Commissioner For Canada, London, London Jan.2, 1948. LAC E. Aylen-DC Scott fonds, LMS – 0204 Box
10, Folder 4.
18
Times of Ceylon, December 29, 1948. LAC E. Aylen-DC Scott fonds, LMS – 0204 Box 9, Folder 8.
17
32
Bent like a shield between the silver seas
It flashes back the hauteur of the sun;
Yet teems with humblest beauties, still a part
Of its Titanic and ebullient heart…
And Thou, O Power, that ’stablishest the Nation,
Give wisdom in the midst of our elation;
Who are so free that we forget we are—
That freedom brings the deepest obligation:
Grant us this presage for a guiding star,
To lead the van of Peace, not with a craven spirit,
But with the consciousness that we inherit
What built the Empire out of blood and fire,
And can smite, too, in passion and with ire.
Purge us of Pride, who are so quick in vaunting
When all the flags of the Furies are unfurled,
When Truth and Justice, wildered and unknit,
Shall turn for help to this young, radiant land,
We shall be quick to see and understand:
What shall we answer in that stricken hour?19
Fragment of an Ode to Canada is one of several of Scott’s overt tributes to the Empire.
Before a British audience just two years after World War II, its selection underscored the
close ties between Canada and its mother country. Like many of his contemporaries in the
Canadian elite, Scott was an enthusiastic defender of the British connection. He was
asked to commemorate Royal visits in 1901 and 1939. On the latter occasion a poem for
the departing Royal couple was read on national radio service of the Canadian
Broadcasting Corporation.20
In the latter stages of his life and at his death in 1947, Scott was not a household
name in Canada, but he was clearly venerated by the literary and journalistic elites who
19
Duncan Campbell Scott, The Poems of Duncan Campbell Scott (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1926),
11.
20
LAC-BAC, Elise Aylen – Duncan Campbell Scott fonds, LMS-0204.
33
were familiar with his artistic output and civil service career. Ottawa society columnist
Madge Macbeth remembered Scott with fondness,
He was a gentle man, a sensitive man, a man with deep fondness for his friends.
Never aggressive or assuming a superior pose, he was humble, and yet did not
like to be ignored…
In a certain mood, he was a wonderful mimic. I remember, for example,
his imitation of a circus barker. As soon as he began his spiel in the manner of a
red-faced, harsh-throated barrel-bodied man, the room fell away and we were
choking in the dust of the Mid-way, our ears tortured by the whine of the distant
calliope; and we were surrounded by a crowd of corn-gnawing, corn-licking,
goggle-eyed rustics doing the fair.21
For many years following his death, Canadian literary critics and anthologists
lionized Scott’s role in the development of a national literature. They often pointed to his
Indian Department experience as a positive source of inspiration for Scott. Canadian
literary scholar Raymond Souster paid tribute to Scott’s contribution in an introduction to
a collection of Scott’s poems published four decades after his death,
Nature was for him not merely as it was for Lampman – a friendly refuge from
the meanness of man and the growing encroachments of a vulgar new
mechanization of life, but a stage on which human demands were enacted in all
their nobleness and ignominious failure. His years in the Department of Indian
Affairs, where he was able to get to know the character of the Canadian Indian
more intimately than any other poet before or since, stood him in good stead and
led to the creation of a handful of unforgettable poems. Added to that were his
travels across Canada and abroad, giving him a broad vision of the world
unknown to his companions At The Mermaid Inn , Campbell and Lampman.22
Douglas Lochead, Souster’s colleague in the 1985 edition of Scott’s poems, credited
Scott with articulating an appreciation of the Canadian landscape that Lochead felt made
Scott a proto-environmentalist, “For me these poems represent the way we look at our
Canadian environment now, and Duncan Campbell Scott saw it first. In this he was poet
21
22
Macbeth, Memories, 2.
Souster, Powassan’s Drum, x.
34
as visionary.”23 Even in the late stages of the twentieth century some Canadian critics
such as Souster and Lochead believed that Scott’s enduring literary merit trumped
concerns over his record as a senior civil servant in the Indian department.
Duncan Campbell Scott was the vessel of the values and aspirations of a new
nation. His political values, social mores and artistic predilections were a reflection of
the shared aspirations of a post-colonial Canadian intellectual elite. In Ottawa, a small
capital marked both by the Victorian grandeur of its Parliamentary buildings and a tough
lumber town edge, Scott and his peers published, played music and entertained in salons
and concerts that mimicked such elite behaviour in London, New York, Boston and old
Quebec.24 If Scott exemplified the ideals of a new nation, Jacques Soustelle, born in 1912
just as Scott reached the heights of Canada’s civil service, represented the highest
intellectual traditions of France’s Third Republic.
Soustelle
Jacques Soustelle was the quintessential expression of a certain kind of French
ideology that would defend some of the legacies of colonial expansion in the modern era.
He was a scion of a venerable imperial and revolutionary tradition that had kept France at
the forefront of western art, literature and science. Like Scott, Jacques Soustelle had
humble beginnings; his rise was made possible by the national education opportunities of
the Third Republic. The son of a lower middle class family Soustelle was a prodigy. He
earned a national reputation as a brilliant student and writer before he was twenty-five.
Soustelle was born in south-western France of Protestant stock, which set him
apart from his primarily Catholic peers throughout his career. His birth father abandoned
Lochead, Powassan’s Drum, xii.
Sandra Gwyn, The Private Capital: Ambition and Love in the Age of Macdonald and Laurier (Toronto:
McClelland and Stewart, 1984), 455-57.
23
24
35
the family when Soustelle was a very young boy. His mother re-married a middle class
man in Lyon with whom Soustelle got along well. In France’s rigid system of national
academic testing, he excelled. He was one of a handful of lycéens of his cohort in Lyon to
aspire to France’s grandes écoles. At age seventeen, he was accepted to France’s preeminent training college for post-secondary educators and professors l’École Normale
Supérieure in Paris located on the left bank in the shadow of the Pantheon.25 He began
graduate studies in philosophy. His professors included Marcel Mauss, a pioneer of
French sociology, and Paul Rivet, a physician who became an archeologist and linguist
after leading an expedition of cartographers and earth scientists through Peru prior to
World War I. Soustelle’s cohort included the ethnologist and humanitarian Germaine
Tillion whose doctoral research took her to Algeria, and his wife Georgette Soustelle, who
also became an ethnologist of Mexico. In Paul Rivet, Soustelle would find a maître who
would serve as doctoral supervisor, employer at Le Musée de l’Homme, a kindred soul in
the struggle to combat the rise of European fascism in the 1930s and a comrade in French
resistance to Nazism after the military defeat of France to Germany in June 1940.
Rivet convinced Soustelle and Georgette to make Mexico the subject of their
graduate research.26 Soustelle first visited Mexico in 1932 when he was twenty years of
age. As Soustelle continued his doctoral research in Mexico, he chronicled the experience
Bernard Ullmann, Jacques Soustelle – Le Mal aimé (Paris: Plon, 1995), 16-17 Bernard Ullmann was a
feature reporter with Agence France Presse throughout the 1950s and 1960s. His non-academic biography
of Soustelle is a journalistic account of Soustelle’s life with particular emphasis on Soustelle’s association
with Charles de Gaulle and the loss of French Algeria; Nicole Racine, “Jacques Soustelle” in Jean Maitre,
Dictionnaire Biographique Du Mouvement Ouvrier Français – Quatrième partie 1914-1939 de la Première
à la Seconde Guerre Mondiale, Tome 41 Rova à Szy (Paris: Les Éditions Ouvrières, 1992), 390-91; Nicole
Racine is a French intellectual historian who wrote a biography of Paul Rivet, Soustelle’s maître.
26
Racine, “Soustelle, Jacques”, 391; Jacques Soustelle, Mémoires, apocryphes sous la forme d’une
dialogue avec Georges Suffert (unpublished manuscript provided to the author by Bernard Ullmann in
2008); Christine Lauriere, Paul Rivet Le Savant Et Le Politique (Paris: Publications Scientifiques du
Museum national d'Histoire naturelle, 2008).
25
36
in a non-academic work published in 1936. Soustelle’s literary élan and contrarian
attitude were already on display,
Comme tout le monde, j’ai détesté Veracruz.
On arrive imbu de cette marque européene, et nord-américaine, qui mesure
la civilisation à la hauteur des maisons et au bas degré de la température. Or à
Veracruz les maisons sont basses et la température élevée. C’est un « pays
chaud ». Je songe au froidement du tête qui accompagne, dans notre petitbourgeoisie française, ces phrases: « Il est allé dans les pays chauds… Il a fait les
colonies… » Car il n’y a que la France et les colonies. Cela vous classe un
homme.27
It was the beginning of a love affair with the country that would inspire Soustelle to write
admirable works of ethnology and histories of civilization, some of which are published
to this day.28 As a young scholar, Soustelle was particularly marked by his encounter with
the heady, idealistic days of Mexican indigenismo, an attempt to redeem Mexican Indians
by helping them join a mestizo, modern Mexico. Often in the company of Manuel Gamio,
one of the post-revolutionary Mexico’s great theorists and a leading indigenista of his
time, Soustelle toured the rural schools and cultural missions in Hidalgo, Oaxaca and
Chiapas.29 In his popular account Mexique terre indienne, Soustelle recounted a visit to a
village near Querétaro in traditionally Otomí territory north of Mexico City,
En accord avec la mission culturelle (qui vient de s’installer à 50 kilomètres plus
loin à Ixmilquilpan), on a assaini le village, trace deux petits jardins publics,
donné des représentations théatrales. On introduit chez les Indiens des notions
d’hygiène, on lutte contre l’alcoolisme produit par la pulque. Un peu plus loin, les
terrains communaux, l’ejido s’organisent sous la direction d’un ingénieur. Oui,
malgré tout, c’est une vie nouvelle qui commence; l’indien soulève peu à peu
cette Pierre tombale qui l’écrase: le fanatisme prêché par la clergé, qui le
maintient dans sa misère. …mon première contact direct avec l’éducation rurale.30
27
Jacques Soustelle, Mexique terre indienne (Paris: Plon, 1936), 7.
Jacques Soustelle, Les quatre soleils Souvenirs et réflexions d’un ethnologue au Mexique (PARIS :
CNRS Éditions, 2009) Originally published in Paris by LibrariePlon, 1967.
29
Soustelle, terre indienne, 18-33.
30
Ibid, 18.
28
37
Mexico was Soustelle’s primary political, cultural and intellectual inspiration. Even
as he became embroiled in the resistance against Nazism and later in the bloody tragedy of
Algeria, Soustelle returned literally and intellectually to Mexico – its indigenous present
and past was the wellspring of his worldview. Writing about his return to Mexico in 1941,
following a perilous mission to connect with General Charles de Gaulle in London to
continue his resistance efforts of diplomacy and propaganda on
behalf of France Libre, Soustelle ruminated on his Mexico,
Lorsque dans le nuit, le train franchit le pont international sur le Rio Bravo, entre
la ville américaine de Laredo (Texas) et la ville mexicaine de Nuevo Laredo
(Tamaulipas) et je vis dans l’aube tiède, les contours quadrangulaires des maisons
d’adobe, je me retrouvai avec joie sur le sol de le Mexique qui était devenu,
depuis dix ans, comme ma seconde patrie. J’avais appris à l’aimer, à aimer ses
montagnes, ses steppes crevassées, ses forêts mystérieusement vibrantes, à aimer
son peuple si riche de traditions millénaires et d’élan rénovateur. Déjà le général
Cardenas président de la République, m’avait généreusement accordé la qualité de
réfugié politique que la constitution Mexicaine, la plus humaine et la plus
progressiste du monde, reconnaît à tous les persécutés.31
In 1955, having just published his most widely read work about Mexico, La vie
quotidienne des Aztèques, Soustelle would strive to import his understanding of
indigenista policies to French Algeria in a doomed effort to integrate Arab and Berber
populations with Europeans. The extraordinary past of Mexico and its unrivaled melding
of Aboriginality and European political ideologies would forever fascinate Soustelle
throughout a turbulent and extraordinarily eventful life until his death in 1990.
Soustelle’s work in Mexico between 1932 and 1936 began among the Otomí and
Pame Indians in then remote mountain areas around Mexico City. As was required of him
by French doctoral academic standards, Soustelle also undertook a secondary,
31
Soustelle, Envers et contre tout (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1947), 216.
38
comparative study of the Lacandon Mayans in southern Mexico.32 The Lacandon Mayans
reside primarily in the rain forests of Chiapas. In the 1930s, Soustelle visited a group of
approximately four hundred pre-industrial holdouts from both Christian, imperial Hispanic
civilization and the then current ‘redemptive’ alternative of Mexican revolutionary
indigenista policies. In addition to his academic research, Soustelle, at his left-leaning,
anti-imperial apogee and using a pseudonym, fired off reams of journalism
to left-wing publications in Paris condemning the Mexican Catholic church and the
behaviour of landowners and foreign corporations plundering Mexico’s natural resources
at the expense of Indigenous rural peoples.33 Soustelle believed his reportage was a much
needed response to what he considered unbalanced, sensationalistic accounts in the
mainstream French press about the persecution of the Mexican Catholic church by the
Mexican revolutionary left.
Soustelle, terre indienne, 141-145, 185-253; Jacques Soustelle, Les quatre soleils : L’itinéraire
intellectuel de Jacques Soustelle, ethnographe du Mexique terre indienne (Paris : Plon, 1967), 185-253.
33
Soustelle writing as Jean Duriez. Multiple issues of MASSES and Spartacus, (1932-1936) Bibliothèque
nationale de France – Mitterand. See MASSES, September, October, November, December 1933; Soustelle,
Spartacus, 7 décembre, 1934; 28 février, 1935.
32
39
Figure 4 Jacques Soustelle c.1938 during construction of le Musée de l'Homme (courtesy
MqB)
Despite his enduring achievements in Mexican ethnology and culture, Soustelle is
not known primarily as a social scientist. He is better known darkly for his work in
Algeria. The ethnologist and resistance hero Soustelle, once associate director of le
Musée de l’Homme, was selected across party lines by then French minister of the interior
François Mitterand in 1955 to become France’s last Governor of Algeria just as a vicious
war of independence entered its decisive phase. On February 1, 1955
Abdelmadjid Ourabah, an Algerian member from Constantine, rose in France’s
Assemblée Nationale to read a ringing endorsement of the rights of Mexico’s Indigenous
peoples from Soustelle’s work. Ourabah then posed a question which would haunt
Soustelle and those who try to understand him for decades to follow,
40
La place que M. Soustelle revendiquait pour le peuple indien dans la nation
mexicaine, comment pourrait-il la refuser aujourd’hui au peuple algérien dans la
nation française?34
Just days later Soustelle arrived in Algeria heady with an ambitious reform program
informed by his knowledge of Mexican land reform and indigenismo. He recruited some
of the most progressive social scientists that France could proffer including his former
colleague at Le Musée de l’Homme, Germaine Tillion.
Tillion is renowned for her theory of clochardisation in which she detailed the
poverty of the Algerian masses that resulted from settler colonialism coupled with a
population explosion made possible through the introduction of antibiotics and mass
vaccination.35 She and Soustelle had a remarkable relationship. They were both students
of Mauss and Rivet; they joined their colleagues at Le Musée de l’Homme in resistance
against Nazism (Tillion was arrested and survived incarceration in a Nazi concentration
camp); and in 1955, she and Soustelle would introduce their ambitious reform program of
education and community organization based on Soustelle’s understanding of the
indigenista policies. The reform program known as le plan Soustelle crashed against the
reality of an expanding military conflict between the French army and Algerian militants
bent on national independence. Within six months Soustelle, while still espousing reform,
was an advocate for l’Algérie française determined to win a war against what he regarded
as barbarous opponents and Tillion had quit his cabinet although she remained on as a
civil servant.36 In 2008, Germaine Tillion died at age 103. The previous year, an operetta
34
Cited in Jacques Soustelle, Aimée et souffrante Algérie (Paris: Plon, 1956), 7.
Germaine Tillion, “L’Algérie en 1957” in L’Afrique bascule vers l’avenir, by Germaine Tillion (Paris:
Éditions Tirésias Michel Reynaud, Paris 1999), 85,91,94-5; Tillion, La traversée du mal entretien Avec
Jean Lacouture (Paris: Arléa, 2000), 97-8.
36
Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace: Algeria, 1954-1962 (New York: Viking Press, 1978),
35
41
Tillion wrote to boost morale among her fellow inmates at Ravensbruck concentration
camp in the 1940s, was performed by Théâtre du Chatelet in Paris.37
By the time Algerian independence was declared in 1962, Soustelle was a fugitive
from France suspected by many for plotting assassination attempts against Charles de
Gaulle, the man he had bravely served in the Resistance but had broken with over French
policies in Algeria.38 As a fugitive apparently intent on assisting in the murder of
France’s president, Soustelle continued to write magisterial works about Mexico
including Les quatre soleils, an extraordinary contemplation of civilizations and the role
of ethnology, in which Soustelle considered the Mayan and Aztec civilizations alongside
great European and Asian cultures.39 In his valorization of ancient Mexico, Soustelle was
echoing the political ideology of the Porfirian era and Mexican archaeology and
anthropology of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that sought to establish
Mexico as a cultural peer of Europe by insisting on its own imperial past under the
Aztecs, Mayans, Olmecs and Toltecs.40
37
Germaine Tillion, mise en scène Bérénice Collet, réalisation François Dubreuil,« LE VERFÜGBAR AUX
ENFERS une opèrette-revue à Ravensbruck » TMP CHATELET -AXESUD - ASSOCIATION
GERMAINE TILLION. DVD of performance recorded at 65th anniversary of the liberation of Ravensbruck,
16-19 April, 2010. Courtesy of Nelly Forget, Association Germaine Tillion.
The work was performed for the first time during the last year of Tillion’s life June 2 and 3, 2007 at Théâtre
du Chatelet, Paris.
38
Ullmann, le mal aimé. 332-48; James D. Le Sueur, “Before the Jackal,” 183-246 in Ben Abro,
Assassination July 14: An Underground Thriller, with a historical essay by James D. Le Sueur (Lincoln &
London: University of Nebraska Press, 2001) ‘Ben Abro’ is a pseudonym chosen by a couple of British
students in Paris in the 1960s. Their spy novel is a thinly veiled portrayal of a French social scientist clearly
based on Soustelle who joins in a plot to assassinate Charles de Gaulle over France’s loss of Algeria. The
book’s publication resulted in a lawsuit brought by Soustelle against the authors that was settled out of court.
The charges and counter charges over the involvement of Soustelle with the OAS is highly contested in the
French historiography. There is wide agreement, supported by Ullmann’s path-breaking research that
Soustelle participated in meetings in which various assassination attempts were discussed.
39
Soustelle, Les quatre soleils.
40
Claudio Lomnitz-Adler, Deep Mexico, Silent Mexico: An Anthropology of Nationalism (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota, 2001), 242-57.
42
Jacques Soustelle returned from self-exile to France in 1968 following an amnesty
for opponents of Algerian independence and just prior to the death of his erstwhile
mentor Charles de Gaulle. He re-claimed his seat in the Assemblée Nationale, was named
to prestigious academic posts and continued writing books and documentary film scripts
about Mexico. In 1984, the former exile was named to L’Académie française. At the
induction, Claude Levi-Strauss hailed Soustelle’s early academic works as
masterpieces.41
His death in August 1990 provoked a litany of contradictory assessments. Some
treated Soustelle as an unrepentant fascist supporter of anti-independence movements in
Africa. Others remembered his service in the resistance. Most agreed that as an
ethnologist he had been one of France’s great twentieth-century intellectuals. As the
leftist daily Libération expressed it, the French struggled to reconcile the divergent
aspects of Soustelle’s mouvementé career,
Jacques Soustelle laisse, au choix, le souvenir d’un intellectuel “gauchiste” des
années trente, d’un animateur de la France libre, d’un gaulliste convaincu, d’un
membre du CNR-OAS ou d’un connaisseur hors pair des civilisations aztèque,
toltèque ou maya. Plus qu’une carrière politique sinueuse, ses livres sur le lointain
passé de l’Amérique centrale lui survivront.42
France’s most respected newspaper Le Monde eulogized Soustelle on its front page. Like
its rival Libération, the paper chose, above all, to recognize Soustelle’s ethnological
work,
Plus que la longue fidélité à de Gaulle, rien que sa fidélité plus longue encore à
une Algérie française qu’avec acharnement il avait cru pouvoir maintenir en la
transformant, ce sont ces « Indiens aux yeux d’obsidienne » des temps
Jacques Soustelle, Discours de réception de M. Jacques Soustelle à L’Académie Française et réponse
de M. Jean Dutourd (Paris: Éditions Flammarion, 1984), 109-113
42
Faligot, Roger and Kauffer, Rémi “Jacques Soustelle: la fin d’un homme de science et de politique,”
Libération, August 8, 1990, 36.
41
43
précolombiens qui auront marqué, sans déception, le long itinéraire d’un
intellectuel dont la guerre avait fait un homme d’action.43
An accompanying article praised Soustelle’s singular contribution to the world’s
understanding of Mesoamerica,
Le sens de sa mission s’impose alors à Jacques Soustelle : son œuvre montrera
que ces Indiens, héritiers d’une tradition millénaire, sont dépositaires d’une
véritable culture et qu’ils doivent être respectés comme tels.Dans toute son
oeuvre, Jacques Soustelle s’est attaché à mettre en évidence le continuum
historique entre la préhistoire, les hautes civilisations et la culture des Indiens
actuels.44
Unlike their moderate counterparts in the French press, the French Communist Party
daily L’Humanité ‘eulogized’ Soustelle as a murderer of Algerian citizens, a failed
assassin and apologist of right-wing regimes from Asunción to Pretoria.45 Finally, the
centre right Quotidien de Paris surveyed Soustelle’s life in tragic terms,
…la grande faiblesse de Jacques Soustelle fut précisément de ne pas se comporter
en homme politique mais en homme de passion, de croire à ce qu’il croyait et de
se battre pour des idées qui furent des siennes toute sa vie durant. Soustelle restera
un cas à part, un homme de courage et de fidélité douloureuse.46
Five years after his death, an international group of anthropologists and
archaeologists held a conference in Soustelle’s honour. One of his Mexican peers,
Eduardo Matos Moctezuma, the director of el Templo Mayor, ruins and a museum at the
site of the Aztec city of Tenochtitlan now in the centre of Mexico City, wrote an
introduction to the conference’s collected papers. First, Matos Moctezuma saluted the
savant of Mesoamerica who had inspired a Mexican student,
Jean Planchais “La mort de Jacques Soustelle…” Le Monde , August 8,1990, front page.
Christian Duverger, “De l’ethnologue de terrain au vulgarisateur de haut niveau,” Le Monde, August 8,
1990, page 8.
45
L’Humanité August 8, 1990.
46
Le Quotidien de Paris, August 8,1990, cited in cited in Dominique Balvet, “Jacques Soustelle et l’Algérie
française: gaullisme et anti gaullisme” (PhD diss.,Université Charles de Gaulle Lille 3, 2003),
769, footnote 69.
43
44
44
The first tme that I heard the name of Jacques Soustelle was in Mexico’s
National School of Anthropology. It was in 1960 and I was a second year
anthropology student. I eagerly read a book that fascinated me.: The Daily LIfe of
the Aztecs. It’s contents led me to one the Mesoamerican societes and for the need
to read both historical and archeological sources…Soustelle’s book opened the
door to Mesoamerican societies.47
Matos Moctezuma did not shy from what might be the central contradiction in Soustelle’s
life: his steadfast support of l’Algérie Française. He evoked a time in the late 1960s and
1970s when the mention of Soustelle’s name among Mexican social scientists would
trigger a denunciation of Soustelle’s position on Algeria. Even Matos Moctezuma, a
friend of Soustelle’s to the end, confessed he was unimpressed with Soustelle’s stance,
I was never convinced by what he wrote about his decision to break relations with
General de Gaulle with whom he had been a close collaborator during the World
War II.48
Soustelle gave his critics plenty of ammunition. His rejection of Algerian
independence and insistence on the potential for his vaunted integration set him apart
from many of his French intellectual peers including Jean-Paul Sartre and Raymond
Aron. While Soustelle is often seen as a renegade in this regard, it is worth noting that his
mentor Paul Rivet, Albert Camus and Germaine Tillion also opposed Algerian
independence as war raged. Soustelle was astonishingly impolitic for a man who spent a
great deal of his life in politics. Late in life, he seemed to cultivate a reputation as
something of a crank taking positions in defence of Israel; some Latin American rightEduardo Matos Moctezuma, “Rembranzas” in Mille ans de civilisation Mésoaméricaine Vol 1
Hommages à Jacques Soustelle réunis par Jacqueline de Durand-Forest et Georges Baudot (Paris:
l’Harmattan, 1995), 3. Spanish original « La primera vez que oí el nombre de Jacques Soustelle fue en la
Escuela Nacional de Antropología de México. Corría el año de 1960 y yo cursaba el segundo año de la
carrera de Arqueología. Leí con avidez un libro que me pareció fascinante: La vida cotidiana de los
Aztecas. Su contenido me llevó a conocer una de las sociedades mesoamericanas para la que era necesario
leer tanto de fuentes históricos como de arqueología… el libro de Soustelle me abrió la puerta a las
sociedades mesoamericanas.” Translation by James Cullingham.
48
Ibid, 3-4. Spanish original “Nunca me convenció lo que escribió en relación a su posición que o llevó a
romper con De Gaulle, de quien había sido cercano colaborador durante la segunda guerra mundial.”
Translated by James Cullingham
47
45
wing leaders such as Stroessner of Paraguay; and most provocatively for the time, the
government of South Africa as it muddled murderously towards the end of apartheid.
Soustelle was almost singular in his public refusal to unquestionably embrace causes like
Palestinian nationalism or the liberation struggle of the African National Congress.
Soustelle aired his decidedly untrendy, contrarian views about the apartheid regime (and
the United States of America) in prestigious publications such as Le Monde,
Je peux affirmer, par expérience personnelle qu’il y a quelques années on voyait
encore au Texas ou Louisiane plus de traces d’apartheid qu’en n’en voit
aujourd’hui à Johannesburg.49
The Shifting Reputations of Scott and Soustelle
Duncan Campbell Scott and Jacques Soustelle share a similar trajectory in public
esteem. They both shifted from being shining examples of their society’s best values and
traditions to being characterized as unsavoury reminders of a shameful past. Within
twenty years or so of Scott’s death in 1947 and after France ‘lost’ Algeria for good in
1962 despite Soustelle’s efforts, their work and the values they embraced had been cast
into a dark light. Throughout their lifetime, these men were often lauded for their
accomplishments as creative people and for their activities in public life. In the twentyfirst century, both are tarnished by their association with aspects of their countries’ most
infamous deeds. For almost all of Scott’s career and for significant stretches of
Soustelle’s, these men were regarded as highly accomplished individuals, incarnations of
‘the best and brightest’ their societies were producing.50 Jacques Soustelle was one of
France’s greatest twentieth-century intellectuals. Was he also a neo-fascist who planned
murder? Duncan Campbell Scott wrote some accomplished poems and short stories; he
49
Jacques Soustelle, “Ou veut-on venir à Pretoria?’ Le Monde, Paris, December 3, 1977, 7 ; Ullmann, Le
mal aimé, 398-9 ; Jacques Soustelle, La longue marche d’Israël, (Paris : Librairie Arthème Fayard, 1968).
50
David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest (New York: Random House, 1972).
46
campaigned for a lifetime on behalf of Canadian writers and painters. What individual
responsibility must be ascribed to Scott for a comprehensive state and church sponsored
assault on the human rights and dignity of Indigenous peoples in Canada?
For Duncan Campbell Scott this conundrum has resulted in a fundamental rethinking by Canadian literary critics of the relationship between his ‘day job’ at the
Indian Department and his poetry. The great Canadian literary and cultural theorist
Northrop Frye grappled with the Scott enigma on several occasions. Equally attracted by
the skill of Scott’s best poems and repelled by the colonized and colonizing ideology at
times present in the poetry, Frye recognized Scott as an archetypal Canadian artist.51
Frye’s most celebrated student, Margaret Atwood, deals parenthetically with Scott’s
Indian Department legacy while acknowledging the fundamental contribution that he and
a fellow civil servant Archibald Lampman of the Canadian Post Office made to the
development of Canadian letters,
Part of the delight of reading Canadian poetry chronologically is watching the
gradual emergence of a language appropriate to its objects. I’d say it first began to
happen in poets such as Lampman and Duncan Campbell Scott.52
In 1986 Atwood included “Les Desjardins” a Scott short story in a collection of Canadian
short stories that she co-edited.53 It is perhaps a sign of Scott’s diminished stature in
Canadian letters due to increased knowledge of his Indian Department role that he is
omitted from a recent compilation of Canadian short stories.54
Northrop Frye, “Conclusion to a Literary History of Canada” in The Bush Garden: Essays On The
Canadian Imagination (Toronto: Anansi Press,1971), 219.
52
Margaret Atwood, Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature (Toronto: Anansi Press, 1972),
62.
53
Margaret Atwood & Robert Weaver, eds, The Oxford Book Of Canadian Short Stories In English
(Toronto-Oxford-New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 24-8.
54
Jane Urquhart ,ed., The Penguin Book of Canadian Short Stories (Toronto: Penguin Canada, 2007)
Scott appears in many earlier collections of this kind. In 1929, the literary critic Raymond Knister edited
his Canadian Short Stories. In the forward he wrote, “And a perfect flowering of art is embodied in one
51
47
Gradually Canadian literary theorists began to fold Scott’s Indian Department
work more directly into their considerations. In 1980, Robert McDougall, professor of
English at Carleton University in Ottawa, was asked to submit a biography of Scott for a
new encyclopedia,
…his literary reputation has never been in doubt. He has been well
represented in virtually all major anthologies of Canadian poetry published since
1900. His “Indian” poems, in which he drew on his experiences in the field, have
been widely recognized and valued. There is some conflict here between Scott’s
views as an administrator committed to an assimilation policy, and his
sensibilities as a poet saddened by the waning of an ancient culture. Precise in
imagery, intense yet disciplined, flexible in metre and form, Scott’s poems
weathered well the transition from traditional to modern poetry in Canada.55
From a literary perspective, the most persuasive re-evaluation is that of Stan
Dragland who has spent a career wondering about Duncan Campbell Scott. Dragland
confesses to being “torn apart”56 by his conflicted view about Scott, but he wisely
underscores Scott’s enduring yet shifting place in Canadian intellectualism,
As a benign or sinister spirit, Scott continues to haunt us. Many of his
essays show him consciously constructing Canada, still a work-in-progress fifty
years after his death. By introducing his contributions to nation-making into the
light of newer thinking about empire and race, we hope to enlist him for a further
phase of the process.57
By the early 1990s a decade after the 1982 entrenchment of “existing Aboriginal
and Treaty rights” in the Canadian constitution and following a series of public disputes
over Aboriginal land rights in many parts of Canada, but especially so in Québec,
northern Ontario and British Columbia, as well as the ultimately fruitless constitutional
volume, In The Village of Viger, by Duncan Campbell Scott. It is work which has had an unobtrusive
influence, but it stands out after thirty years as the most satisfying individual contribution to the Canadian
short story.”, xix.
55
R.L. McDougall, “Duncan Campbell Scott” in The Canadian Encyclopedia Second Edition, Volume III
(Edmonton: Hurtig Publishers, 1988), 1960.
56
Cullingham, Poet and the Indians.
57
Stan Dragland, “Introduction” Duncan Campbell Scott: Addresses, Essays and Reviews (edited by Leslie
Ritchie) (London, ON: Canadian Poetry Press, 2000), xii.
48
debates concerning both Québec’s place in confederation and Aboriginal rights in the
Meech Lake and Charlottetown initiatives of the governments of Prime Minister Brian
Mulroney (1984-1993), Duncan Campbell Scott’s reputation changed dramatically.
Canada experienced a series of highly publicized confrontations involving Indigenous
peoples in the early 1990s. These include the Kahnawake (Oka) crisis in Quebec,
Gustafson Lake in British Columbia and the circumstances surrounding the death of
activist Dudley George in Ontario. Each situation provoked saturation media coverage
and a wide range of legal, military and political responses. The Kahnawake conflict led
directly to the commissioning of a Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples by the then
government of Prime Minister Brian Mulroney. It was during this period that Aboriginal
activists and scholars of the Indian Department exchanged the persona of Scott the
foundational poet for Scott in his Deputy Superintendant General of Indian Affairs role,
the dark ideologue at the centre of a tragically misguided policy. Historian Winona
Stevenson Wheeler argued Scott reflected mainstream values about race and nation in
Canada,
He was a Victorian man. He was very stoic. I would say he was anal retentive. I
think he really tried to, if not become a role model, at least live up to his perceived
ideals of western civilization.
He was pivotal in that he took the initiative and actually ran with it. He imposed
the policies. I guess a lot of us can look back in retrospect, in presentist terms, and
see him as an evil force. We can blame him. We can call him the devil, but he was
a man of his time. He represented an era. His ideology was the ideology of the
day.58
By the 1970s and 1980s, as Canada’s Indigenous rights movement gained an
audience schooled by the American civil rights movement and the anti-Viet Nam War
58
Winona Stevenson (now Wheeler) in Duncan Campbell Scott: The Poet and The Indians, documentary
film, Tamarack Productions in Co-Production with The National Film Board of Canada, 1995. James
Cullingham, director/producer. Stevenson has since changed her family name to Wheeler. She is a
professor and head of Native Studies at the University of Saskatchewan.
49
movement, Scott’s peculiar double career appeared in a different light through the filter of
a changed politics. In the aftermath of the failed White Paper on Indian Policy presented
by the government of Pierre Trudeau in 1968, a policy which would have resoundingly
capped the assimilation policies of Scott’s watch, Indian leaders sparked a national
reconsideration of the assimilation project.59 If Trudeau and his Indian Affairs Minister
Jean Chrétien insisted that Francophone Canadians had a right to their identity throughout
the Dominion, surely Indigenous peoples warranted some special recognition of their
rights and identities under Canadian sovereignty.
As Indian policy became a frequent subject of national discourse during this
period, Canadian historians began focusing on Scott’s role at the Indian Department.
Unlike earlier scholars who had been primarily, if not exclusively, interested in his poetry
and prose, E. Brian Titley expressly rejected consideration of Scott’s literary output
altogether while insisting that the real stuff of inquiry about the man lay in his civil
service career. The Scott that emerged in Titley’s ground breaking 1986 work A Narrow
Vision: Duncan Campbell Scott and the Administration of Indian Affairs in Canada was a
portrait from the dark side of the Canadian psyche.60 Officious, conniving, Victorian to
his marrow in his absolute certainty regarding British superiority, Titley’s Duncan
Campbell Scott was the determinedly effective bête noir to Indigenous aspiration in
Canada. In Titley’s view, post-Confederation Canada had primordial national business in
seizing Indian lands and resources and in snuffing out systems of spiritual belief,
Harold Cardinal, The Unjust Society: The Tragedy of Canada’s Indians (Edmonton: Hurtig, 1969); H.A.
McCue, The Only Good Indian: Essays by Canadian Indians (Toronto: New Press, 1972); Sally M.Weaver,
Making Canadian Indian Policy: The Hidden Agenda 1968-70 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
1981).
60
E. Brian Titley, A Narrow Vision: Duncan Campbell Scott and the Administration of Indian Affairs in
Canada (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1986).
59
50
language, customs and political organization deemed inconsistent with rapid
‘civilization’. In this quest, in Titley’s view, Canada had a willing champion in Duncan
Campbell Scott.
Clearly, Scott, in the minds of many observers, was no longer a sensitive artist with
a trying bureaucratic job in which he acquitted himself admirably. Scholars like
Christopher Bracken, Robin Brownlie and R. Cole Harris regarded Scott through the lens
of post-colonial theory and looked at the Indian Department’s activities as the lynchpin of
Canada’s assertion of national sovereignty and domestic colonization of Aboriginal
peoples.61 In current Canadian historiography, this has been brilliantly encapsulated by
Ian McKay in a series of extremely influential works about Canada’s “liberal order
framework.” McKay casts the first seventy-five years of Canada’s history as a nation state
as an on-going revolution led by, and for the benefit of, a liberal elite often at the
exclusion of minorities and with particular malevolence in regards to policies concerning
Aboriginal peoples.62
Similarly, Soustelle the academic prodigy, heroic résistant and grand interpreter
of Mexican civilizations was replaced by the end of the 1960s with image of a selfserving, ultra-conservative stalwart of indefensible causes. After Soustelle’s death, the
British spy novelist Robert Stillman, then embroiled in a legal dispute over Soustelle’s
alleged OAS ties called him, “ a pathetic, bronchitic old man, who really had nothing to
61
Christopher Bracken, The Potlatch Papers: A Post Colonial History (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1997); Robin Brownlie, A Fatherly Eye: Indian Agents, Government Power, and Aboriginal
Resistance in Ontario, 1918-1939 (Don Mills, Ont. ; New York: Oxford University Press, 2003); R. Cole
Harris, Making Native Space : Colonialism, Resistance, and Reserves in British Columbia (Vancouver:
UBC Press, 2002).
62
Ian Mackay, "The Liberal Order Framework: A Prospectus for a Reconnaissance of Canadian History."
Canadian Historical Review 81, no. 4 (Dec. 2000): 617, 636; Ian McKay, “Canada as a Long Liberal
Revolution” in Liberalism and Hegemony: Debating the Canadian Liberal Revolution, Jean-François
Constant and Michel Ducharme (Toronto-Buffalo-London: University of Toronto Press, 2009), 353, 361.
51
say… at the end of the day, (he) was a pauvre type, pauvre con.”63 Indeed Soustelle’s
final days were marked by conflict with publishers and his political opponents. He felt
wrongly accused of association with leaders such as Paraguay’s dictator Stroessner even
while at the same time being attacked by Stoessner’s loyalists,
…des amis français résidant au Paraguay m’écrivent que la clique fasciste au
pouvoir se vante de me faire arrêter par Interpol ! N’y a-t-il pas moyen de bloquer
cette persécution?64
Just a month before his death, Soustelle pleaded with his lawyer to resolve a rights
dispute between French publishers over his works,
Votre lettre fait apparaître que je suis amené à m’engager dans un
labyrinthe sans fin.
Je n’ai ni le temps, ni le goût, ni les moyens de partir à la chasse de
documents, lettres, etc. vieux de plusieurs années.65
Soustelle who had resisted Nazism in the 1940s and then plunged into the Algerian French
conflict of the 1950s and 1960s was embattled still in his declining years spouting very
unfashionable political views and sometimes battling publishers over matters concerning
his intellectual property. His political biographer Bernard Ullmann fittingly dubbed
Soustelle le mal aimé, or black sheep.66
After his death, Soustelle was replaced in the Académie Française by JeanFrancois Deniau, one of the architects of the European Union. Deniau was a diplomat, a
politician, a great sailor, a journalist and a novelist. As convention has it, it was Deniau’s
duty at his induction to offer an ‘éloge’ of the man he replaced ‘sous la Coupole’,
63
Robert Stillman, as quoted in interview conducted by James D. Le Sueur, April 16, 1994 in Abro,
Assassination, 244-245.
64
Jacques Soustelle. Letter to his lawyer Charles Benfredj, November 11, 1989. Provided to the author by
M. Benfredj, March 2008.
65
Jacques Soustelle. Letter to his lawyer Charles Benfredj,July 1, 1990. Provided to the author by M.
Benfredj, March 2008.
66
Ullmann, le mal aimé.
52
Je n’ai pas essayé d’analyser une œuvre. Il y a parmi vous bien plus compétent
que moi, les plus hautes autorités en ethnologies, mais aussi en sciences, en
philosophie, en littérature… Non, j’ai seulement cherché à approcher un homme
pour le comprendre un peu mieux que ce que les notices peuvent nous apprendre.
A l’approcher avec prudence et, plus j’avançais, émotion. En sachant qu’il restera
un mystère Soustelle. Et en trouvant cela bien. Parce qu’il n’y a pas, sans cette
ombre portée du mystère, de véritable stature humaine ; et que l’incompréhensible,
l’inexplicable sont les derniers remparts de notre liberté.
Chacun de nous, à vingt ans, et parfois plus tard, a rêvé d’être roi. De détenir le
pouvoir suprême, et de se sentir nécessaire totalement et surtout naturellement. Ce
moment où un être humain croit s’identifier à la volonté d’un peuple et à la
permanence d’une nation, est-il plus haut et plus chaud ? Pour Jacques Soustelle,
il aura brillé une fois, trop fort. Le soleil peut aussi brûler.67
Deniau also revealed for the first time that Jacques Soustelle had tipped off French
intelligence about one planned assassination attempt on Charles de Gaulle. Clearly,
Soustelle who was then hidden ‘quelque part en Europe’ (the ingenious by-line he used in
his anti-de Gaulle screeds to French newspapers) was in contact with the plotters. As
Bernard Ullmann’s investigation proves, on this occasion, it was Soustelle who chose
mercy for his old comrade in arms.68
Conclusion
Canada can be put into an international conversation about imperial ideology and
the domestic colonization of Indigenous peoples. Juxtaposing Duncan Campbell Scott
and Jacques Soustelle is a means to do just that. With increased control over its own
‘Indian’ policies, a post confederation Canada internalized and hardened British imperial
systems.69 Duncan Campbell Scott was as influential as any single person in
Jean-Francois Deniau, “Éloge de Jacques Soustelle”, reprinted in Le Monde, December 14, 1992, 9.
Ullmann, le mal aimé, 409-412.
69
Historians of Canada such a Robin Jarvis-Brownlie, Olive Dickason, J. R. Miller, John Milloy and E.
Brian Titley have demonstrated how Indian policy was honed in the early post-confederation period. This
dissertation places emphasis on the importance of a study of “aggressive civilization” as practices in the
67
68
53
implementing and honing those policies in the critical post Confederation era. Canada is
often seen, and certainly Canadians enjoy seeing themselves, as a beacon of light in
international human rights. However Canada was part of a larger story of rapacious
settlement colonization rooted in firm convictions of the racial superiority of the ‘anglosaxon races’. The life and times of Duncan Campbell Scott, contrasted with Jacques
Soustelle’s, demonstrate that Canada was part of a global struggle to ‘develop’ natural
resources, settle colonists and ‘civilize’ Indigenous peoples with often brutal methods.
Such methods were overwhelmingly accepted by Canadian elites throughout Scott’s
career.
Jacques Soustelle’s work as a social scientist and politician places him at the
centre of French debates about its imperial past and its future in a post-colonial world.
His formative academic associations with his teachers Marcel Mauss and Paul Rivet and
his colleague Germaine Tillion make Soustelle a foundational figure in the emergence of
French ethnology and anthropology. His ambitious, but doomed, tenure as Governor
General of Algeria, plus his intellectual jousting with leading French writers about postcolonialism such as Raymond Aron, Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre, make Soustelle
an inescapable and compelling character in France’s end-of-empire reckoning.
United States that was commissioned by the Macdonald government just as DC Scott joined the Indian
department as a clerk. The ‘Davin Report’ is a foundational document in this regard.
Nicholas Flood Davin, “Report on Industrial Schools for Indians and Half-Breeds” Ottawa, 1879. CIHM
No. 03651, York University library microforms; Dickason, Canada’s First Nations, 257-305; Robin Jarvis
Brownlie, A Fatherly Eye: Indian Agents, Government Power, and Aboriginal Resistance in Ontario, 19181939 (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2003); J. R. Miller Shingwauk's Vision: A History of Native
Residential Schools (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996); J.R. Miller, Skyscrapers Hide the
Heavens : A History of Indian-White Relations in Canada. 3rd ed. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
2000), 99-207; John Sheridan Milloy A National Crime: The Canadian Government and the Residential
School System, 1879-1986 (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 1999), 51-186.
54
3. Their Journey In
Introduction
Duncan Campbell Scott and Jacques Soustelle undertook formative voyages early
in their careers. For both men, these extraordinary voyages inspired some of their most
profound and revealing writing. My purpose in this chapter is to evoke the enduring
impressions and crystalline moments of focus from these voyages that contributed so
essentially to the making of each of these men. Scott was a Treaty commissioner for the
government of Canada in the summers of 1905 and 1906. He travelled on two extensive
journeys through the lands of the Anishinabe and Cree peoples living in a large area from
Abitibi Lake near present day Timmins, north to the west coast of James Bay at Fort
Albany and south again to the shore of Lake Superior at the mouth of the Pic River near
present day Marathon, Ontario.
Figure 5 Area of Treaty 9 Expedition (map by Ayman Kadora)
55
Figure 6 Map by Ayman Kadora
Soustelle conducted field research in Mexico for a doctorate in ethnology in 193234. His journeys were two fold: firstly, in central Mexico in an arc extending just south
east of Mexico City, north and west through the states of Hidalgo, Mexico and San Luis
Potosí.
56
Figure 7 Primary Soustelle research area 1932-36 (map by Ayman Kadora)
Soustelle conducted a secondary trip in Chiapas in southern Mexico through the
Lacandon rain forest that lies approximately between Palenque near the Gulf of Mexico
to Ocosingo, a town about 70 kilometres east of the city of San Cristobal de Las Casas, in
the highlands of Chiapas. In each case, the men were transformed. The journeys involved
wilderness travel and encounters with Indigenous peoples in then remote territories of
northern Canada and central and southern Mexico. They met people and encountered
situations that affected their judgment and their work for the rest of their lives.
57
Figure 8 Soustelle secondary research area 1932-36 (map by Ayman Kadora)
Scott’s extended exposure to Indigenous communities crystallized an ideology
that buttressed his remarkably determined and far reaching career in the Canadian Indian
Department. As an artist, the Treaty expeditions of 1905 and 1906 provided the fodder for
many of the poems and short stories that distinguish him as a Canadian writer to this day.
Mexico of the 1930s provided Soustelle with a second home. The mountains, jungles,
plains and deserts of Mexico remained a sanctuary, a solace and an inspiration for
Soustelle until his death in 1990. His love affair with Mexico began in the summer of
1932 when the then twenty-year-old Soustelle disembarked in Vera Cruz. Mexico was
Soustelle’s primary political, cultural and intellectual inspiration. Even as he became
embroiled in the resistance against Nazism and later in the bloody tragedy of Algeria,
Soustelle remained fascinated by Mexico. Its Indigenous present and past remained the
58
wellspring of his worldview. His observation of the attempts to alleviate the poverty and
suffering of Indigenous peoples in the social and educational policies of the Mexican
revolution would animate the fateful policies of le plan Soustelle, which he attempted to
introduce in war-torn Algeria in 1955 after he was named Governor General.
The literature on travel as rite of passage, a coming of age and a moment of
personal transformation for a wide range of nineteenth- and twentieth-century writers,
intellectuals and explorers is diverse and rich. Such literature exposes different ways of
evaluating the imperial gaze in the lives and works of individuals acting for, or against,
colonizing interests. Although such works by no means deal exclusively with Mexico,
Canada, France or Algeria, they share powerful insights about the transformative power
of travel in regions shaped by European imperialism.1
Both Scott and Soustelle were informed by particular national experiences of travel
and exploration essential to their heritage and motivation. In Canada, the early European
explorers including Samuel de Champlain, Samuel Hearne and David Thompson were
among the earliest expressions of a Euro-Canadian literary tradition of which Scott became
part.2 Growing up in France, Jacques Soustelle was very much aware of the extraordinary
eighteenth-century Latin American travels of Alexander Humboldt, particularly his
accounts of New Spain or Mexico. As a young boy, Soustelle was transfixed by accounts
of explorers and devoured books about France’s African and
1
James West Davidson and John Rugge, Great Heart: The History of a Labrador Adventure (Montreal:
McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1997, c1988); Natalie Zemon Davis, Trickster Travels: A Sixteenth
Century Muslim Between Worlds (New York: Hill & Wang, 2006; Natalie Zemon Davis, Women On The
Margins: Three Seventeenth Century Lives (Cambridge, MASS: Harvard University Press, 1995; Margaret
Laurence, The Prophet’s Camel Bell (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1963); Mary-Louise Pratt, Imperial
Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (London & New York: Routledge, 2008; Wendy Roy, Maps of
Difference: Canada, Women and Travel (Montreal & Ithaca, NY: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2005).
2
Germaine Warkentin, Canadian Exploration Literature: An Anthology. Toronto, Ont.: Oxford University
Press, 1993.
59
Asian territories.3 As a young scholar, he was emboldened by the accounts of the
cartography and archaeological expeditions undertaken by his supervisor Paul Rivet in
South America. As a young French traveller and explorer among Mexico’s Indian people,
Soustelle was also following in the footsteps Désiré Charnay, the enterprising nineteenthcentury photographer of Mayan temples of the Yucatan and Chiapas.4
These formative voyages took place in the first half of the twentieth century. Both
traveled through some rough terrain. Both Scott and Soustelle made extensive use of less
industrialized forms of transportation such as canoes, mules and horses. Each of them
relied heavily on Indigenous interlocutors and guides to make their way. The primary
point of reference will be Scott and Soustelle’s extensive writings about these journeys
along with the photographs each man took and field audio recordings produced by
Soustelle.
The secondary literature about Scott’s art and his Indian Department career often
examines the meaning of his 1905 and 1906 journeys as Treaty commissioner.5 The
secondary literature about Soustelle tends to focus on Algeria, his activities for the
French resistance to Nazism that he carried on in Mexico, London and Algiers from
1941-44 and his political career.6 There is surprisingly little attempt to reconcile
Soustelle’s early ethnological pursuits in Mexico with his career following the World
Jacques Soustelle, “Souvenirs, Apocryphes en forme de dialogue avec George Suffert” 1988 unpublished
manuscript provided to the author by Bernard Ullmann in 2008, 4.
4
Désiré Charnay, Voyage au Mexique 1858-1861 (Paris : Ginkgo, 2001)
Keith F. Davis, Désiré Charnay, expeditionary photographer (Albuquerque : University of New Mexico
Press, 1981).
5
E. Brian Titley, A Narrow Vision: Duncan Campbell Scott and the Administration of Indian Affairs in
Canada (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1986) Stan Dragland, Floating Voice: Duncan
Campbell Scott and the Literature of Treaty 9 (Concord, ON: Anansi, 1994).
6
Bernard Ullmann, Jacques Soustelle le mal aimé (Paris: Plon, 1995).
3
60
War II. The chapter will interweave the trajectories and intellectual production of Scott
and Soustelle from these voyages.
Powassan’s Drum: Scott’s Treaty Expedition + Soustelle Finds Mexico
In the spring of 1905, Duncan Campbell Scott was rising through Canada’s Indian
Department when he was named Treaty commissioner for Treaty 9. Scott was then thirtyfive years old, a married father of one daughter. He was an established literary figure in
Canada with publishers in Toronto, Ottawa, New York and Boston. As a journalist and
cultural commentator he was known to the readers of such publications at the Toronto
Globe through the column “At The Mermaid’s Inn” that he had shared with fellow poets
Archibald Lampman and Wilfred Campbell. His short stories and poetry had appeared in
American magazines such as Scribner’s and Muncey’s.
His career at the Indian Department was progressing smartly. He had risen from
the post of clerk for which he was hired in 1879 to become the Department’s chief
accountant. The poet showed a surprising facility with numbers and his handwriting which was often obscure at best in his poetic offerings – was clear, precise and heavily
inked in the Department’s records. As a functionary of the Department, Scott had already
taken journeys into Indian country. His visit to the areas along the northern shore of
Georgian Bay in 1898 had introduced him to a boreal expanse and a world of the
imagination that the surroundings of Ottawa only hinted at. That trip would begin a
poetic meditation that would inspire Scott’s most evocative, accomplished and troubling
Indian poems when coupled with his more extensive journeys into Indian country in the
summers of 1905 and 1906. He was accompanied by fellow bureaucrats, members of the
Royal Canadian Mounted Police and, in 1906, by a few select friends who were
61
educators, writers and painters. In institutional terms, the Treaty 9 trips bolstered Scott’s
career. Within a few years, he received a significant promotion as the Department’s
director of education. By 1913, he would become Deputy Superintendant General, the top
mandarin in Indian Affairs. He held that post for the rest of his civil service career.7
Jacques Soustelle was a graduate student in 1932 when he first visited Mexico. He
travelled with his wife Georgette, also a graduate student of French physician and social
scientist Paul Rivet. The couple had met at L’Institut de l’Ethnologie in Paris where Rivet
taught them. Jacques Soustelle, then twenty years of age, was an academic prodigy. After
excelling in national examinations, he was selected from his lycée in Lyon at age 17 to
study at l’École normale supérieure in Paris. Rivet had profoundly influenced and
impressed the young Soustelle and would continue to play a mentoring role for the
essentially fatherless Soustelle for remainder of his life.8
In large part the teaching of Rivet inspired emerging scholars such as the
Soustelles to select Mexico.9 Rivet championed fieldwork and face-to-face interaction
with ethnological subjects and had made a name for himself as a cartographer and
anthropologist undertaking exotic and dangerous journeys in Ecuador, Peru and
Colombia. At l’École normale supérieure Soustelle was exposed to two gifted teachers
with vastly different approaches: Rivet and Marcel Mauss, who had pioneered modern
sociology along with Émile Durkheim. Mauss charted a path from sociology to ethnology
when he evinced a fascination with comparative social studies. His essay on giving,
7
E.K. Brown “Memoir” in Selected Poems of Duncan Campbell Scott (Toronto: Ryerson, 1951), xi – xlii;
Titley, Narrow Vision, 23-36.
8
Christine Laurière, Paul Rivet – le savant et le politique (Paris: Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle,
2008), 239, 519-20, 618-20 ; Ullmann, Soustelle, 21-2.
9
Jean-François Sirinelli, Génération intellectuelle. Khâgneux et normaliens dans l'entre-deux-guerres
(Paris, Fayard. 1988), 104 ; Ullmann, Soustelle, 24-5.
62
which compares various Indigenous societies, including “Eskimos” and tribal groups of
the Canadian north-west, in their attitudes about property is a classic comparative study.10
Mauss had whetted the young Soustelle’s interest in foreign lands and encouraged a
multidisciplinary approach to academic work that Soustelle found appealing. He also
provided Soustelle with one of his first professional academic assignments: writing an
entry on shamanism for a French encyclopaedia.11 However, it was the diminutive
‘doctorcito’ Rivet of the legendary Latin American expeditions, a man of action who
served France heroically as a physician in World War I, who fired the imagination and
commanded the unswerving loyalty of the young Jacques Soustelle. Rivet introduced a
more active approach to social science. He encouraged his students to understand the
living reality of Indigenous people. This emphasis on the present day was an important
distinction for youthful scholars seeking the adventure of fieldwork in exotic locales.
Late in life, Soustelle reflected that he, his wife and their peers found inspiration in
Rivet’s insistence that Indigenous peoples survived colonialism and could not merely be
seen as relics of the past.12 Distinguishing themselves from the “arm chair” theories of
sociologists such as Mauss, Soustelle and his peers ventured out into remote parts of the
world seeking the linguistic and cultural vestiges of ancient civilizations and Indigenous
peoples.
10
Marcel Mauss. Essai sur le don: forme et raison d’échange dans les sociétés archaïques; préface de
Florence Weber (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2007) First published in l’Année Sociologique,
seconde série, 1923-1924; Marcel Mauss, Sociologie et anthropologie; introduction par Claude LevyStrauss (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1993). Near the end of Soustelle’s career, some forty years
after his first trip to Mexico, Soustelle was still vaunting the influence of Mauss’ seminal work in a 1975
report commissioned by the government of then French president Valery Giscard d’Estaing - Soustelle, La
recherché francaise en archéologie et anthropologie (Paris: La documentation Française, 1975), 13.
11
Jacques Soustelle. “l’Homme et le Surnaturel – Les Phénonèmes religieux » L’Encyclopédie française,
VII (Paris : Société nouvelle de l'Encyclopédie française 1935)
12
Soustelle, Souvenirs, 12-22.
63
Figure 9 Jacques & Georgette Soustelle, Chiapas 1934 (courtesy MqB)
For the Soustelles, this sense of mission meant Mexico. Meanwhile their young colleague
at L’Institut d’Ethnologie, Germaine Tillion, who had also studied with Rivet and Mauss,
went deep into the remote Aurès mountains of Algeria to conduct a study of Berber tribal
peoples. Soustelle and Tillion joined forces twenty years later in Algeria after Soustelle
was named Governor General. As Soustelle’s thinking about Mexico and larger questions
of civilization developed over the course of his life, he would emphasize the fundamental
importance to him as a thinker in seeing things first hand by living among Indigenous
peoples.13 As a scholar formed in the French élite tradition, he practiced within and
would always maintain a respect for classic traditions of intellectual inquiry, but his taste
for action and his sense of adventure found an outlet in the emerging field of ethnology.
Such an approach also appealed to Soustelle’s commitment to social justice. He
was sympathetic to anti-fascist movements in which Rivet was extremely active in France
13
Jacques Soustelle, Les Quatres Soleils, Souvenirs Et Réflexions d'Un Ethnologue Au Mexique terre
indienne (Paris: Plon, 1967), 32-5,39-46,
64
as the Spanish Civil War raged, Mussolini consolidated power and Hitler began to emerge
as a threat to all of Europe. Jacques Soustelle went to Mexico imbued with social
democratic principals. The twenty-year-old Soustelle was an admirer and thoughtful
critic of the Mexican revolution, an advocate for Indigenous rights, a proponent of
maintaining Indigenous languages and an acerbic critic of the Mexican church, large
landowners and the American capitalists that dominated Mexico’s economy and coveted
its rich natural resources. These ideas resonate in his first book, and in the journalism that
he penned from Mexico under the pseudonym of Jean Duriez published in French leftist
newspapers between 1932 and 1935.14
Conversely, Duncan Campbell Scott travelled with a sense of superiority. A man
on the rise, an artist already confident in his abilities, in 1905-06 Scott undertook matters
of fundamental importance to a still fledgling state. As a Treaty Commissioner Scott
represented the Crown. In post-confederation Canada, Scott’s role was vital to
maintaining the tricky balance between federal power in Ottawa with its responsibility for
Indians and provinces which jealously guarded their jurisdiction over abundant natural
resources in hinterlands.
14
Jacques Soustelle, Mexique terre indienne (Paris: Grasset, 1936); Various editions of MASSES and
Spartacus. Specific citations below. The dates of Soustelle’s itinerary in Cuba and Mexico as well as
the events that “Jean Duriez” reports on coincide with Soustelle’s account in Mexique terre indienne.
Perhaps already thinking of a prestigious academic future, Soustelle did not want to be associated by
name with overtly leftist publications. The French intellectual historian Nicole Racine as well as
historical scholars Christian Desbordes and Dominique Balvet concur that Duriez was Soustelle’s
journalistic pseudonym. Christian Desbordes, “Jacques Soustelle et la defense de l’Occident,” Thèse du
Doctorat en science politique, Université d’Auvergne, 2000, 33; Nicole Racine, “Jacques Soustelle”
in Jean Maitre, Dictionnaire Biographique Du Mouvement Ouvrier Français – Quatrième partie 19141939 de la Première à la Seconde Guerre Mondiale, Tome 41 Rova à Szy (Paris: Les Éditions Ouvrières,
1992), 390-1 ; Dominique Balvet, "Jacques Soustelle Et l'Algérie Française: Gaullisme Et Antigaullisme."
Doctorat d'Histoire sous la direction de Jean-Francois Sirinelli, Université Charles de
Gaulle Lille 3, 2003, 25.
65
The border area between the boreal forests of north western Ontario and the
prairies had been fraught with conflict for Canada since the earliest days of confederation
when Louis Riel and the Red River Métis challenged Canadian authority in what would
become Manitoba in 1871. Scott and his fellow commissioners were bringing a treaty with
terms pre-determined by the governments of Canada and Ontario to an area that
encompassed some of the lands that British commander Garnet Wolseley had led a force
of two thousand British regular soldiers and southern Ontario volunteers across in the
summer of 1870 in hot pursuit of Riel. With border questions resolved and with the
completion of one transcontinental railway and the building of a second line to the north,
the un-surrendered Aboriginal lands north of Lake Superior became a region of vital
national interest.15 The official Treaty Report co-signed by Scott, Samuel Stewart and
Ontario Commissioner D.G. MacMartin tersely expressed the Canadian state’s desires,
Increasing settlement, activity in mining and railway construction in that large
section of the province of Ontario north of the height of land and south of the
Albany River rendered it advisable to extinguish the Indian title.16
The use of the word “extinguish” is worth noting. 17As the official account goes on to
say, the Commissioners repeatedly told recalcitrant Indians in places like Osnaburgh,
now called Mishkeegogamang, that they would continue to enjoy their hunting, fishing,
gathering and trapping activities throughout their territories in exchange for settling on
15
J.R. Miller . “Compact, Contract, Covenant: The Evolution of Indian Treaty-Making” in Susan Neyland
& Ted Binnema, eds. New Histories for Old: Changing Perspectives on Canada’s Native Pasts
(Vancouver: UBC Press, 2007), 66-91; J.R. Miller, Compact, Contract, Covenant : Aboriginal TreatyMaking in Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009), 207-14, 228-9, 297; For a useful
discussion of the hardening tendencies in the transition from imperial to national concerns in North
American “borderlands” and “national borders” see Jeremy Adelman and Stephen Aron, “From
Borderlands to Borders: Empires, Nation-States, and the Peoples in between in North American History,”
The American Historical Review, Vol. 104, No. 3 (Jun., 1999) 814-841.
16
Government of Canada, “The James Bay Treaty – Treaty No. 9 (Made in 1905 and 1906) and Adhesions
Made in 1929 and 1930,” LAC-BAC RG10 VOL.3033,235,225 P.3
17
John Flood. “The Duplicity of D.C. Scott and the James Bay Treaty,” Black Moss Journal, Series 2, No.
2, (Fall 1976), 50-63.
66
defined reserves. The construction of railways and highways, mineral exploration, hydroelectric development and timber cutting encroached on traditional pursuits. The presence
of an Ontario commissioner indicated what was really at stake given that the province held
constitutional jurisdiction over natural resources - an authority which would soon trump
Ottawa’s responsibilities for its Indian wards.
In addition to the official report, Scott also wrote a significant journalistic account
of the trips which appeared in 1906 in the prominent American magazine Scribner’s. In
often paternalistic terms Scott describes his duty on the part of Canada of bringing the
Treaty to Indians along the Albany River. In his introduction, Scott refers to Canada’s
longstanding tradition of “puerile negotiations” between representatives of the British
crown and the troubled, marginalized vestiges of what Scott deemed to be a once proud
race foundering on the edge of irrelevance, if not outright extinction.18 His account for
his American readers contains significant omissions from a man working at a high level
on Canadian Indian policy. In the article, Scott did not mention the historic contribution
that Indigenous peoples made in the creation and maintenance of the very nation state he
represented. Many historians agree that Britain required the support of its Indian allies
after the fall of New France.19 This was the initial strategic context for the terms
protecting “Indian country” in King George III’s Proclamation of 1763. The strategic
value of the Proclamation was proven during the War of 1812 when Britain relied heavily
on its Indian allies to protect British North America by achieving a stalemate with the
Duncan Campbell Scott “The Last of The Indian Treaties” Scribner’s 40 (1906); re-printed in DC Scott
The Circle of Affection (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1947), 109-22; and in Duncan Campbell Scott:
Addresses, Essay and Reviews, Vol.1, Leslie Ritchie, ed, introduction by Stan Dragland (London,ON;
Canadian Poetry Press, 2000), 82-93.
19
Olive Dickason, Canada’s First Nations: A History of Founding Peoples from Earliest Times (Toronto:
McClelland & Stewart Inc., 1992) 181-88; J.R. Miller, Compact, Contract, Covenant: Aboriginal TreatyMaking in Canada (Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press, 2009), 66-70.
18
67
burgeoning power to the south to turn back an American invasion. The Proclamation laid
down the legal rules for the signing of treaties that prevailed in Canada of Scott’s day and
which are now enshrined in the provisions concerning Aboriginal rights in the Canadian
constitution.20 In his Scribner’s article, Scott indulged in a near fantasy of frontier
Canada,
In the early days the Indians were a real menace to the colonization of Canada. At
that time there was a league between the Indians east and west of the River St.
Clair, and a concerted movement upon the new settlements would have
obliterated them as easily as a child wipes pictures from his slate. The Indian
nature now seems like a fire that is waning, that is smouldering and dying away in
ashes, then it was full of force and heat. It was ready to break out at any moment
in savage dances, in wild and desperate orgies in which superstitions were
involved with European ideas but dimly understood and intensified by cunning
imaginations inflamed with rum. So all the Indian diplomacy of that day was
exercised to keep the tomahawk on the wall and the scalping knife in the belt.21
Scott’s view of the “early days” of settler – Indian relations in “The Last of The Indian
Treaties” is historically flawed. Its analysis flowed from a mid-nineteenth-century
historiography that glorified European military commanders and either romanticized or
demonized the roles played by Indigenous peoples. 22 Perhaps he was pandering to his
American audience, but Scott, who could not afford to attend university, was dependent
on a Victorian era schoolboy’s understanding of Aboriginal and settler relations.
As to his responsibilities, Scott made clear that he was patient with his Aboriginal
charges,
The simpler facts had to be stated, and the parental idea developed that the King is
a great father of the Indians, watchful over their interests, and ever
compassionate.23
20
Canada, Department of Justice. The Constitution Act 1982 see sections 25 and 35 in “The Canadian
Charter of Rights and Freedoms” http://laws.justice.gc.ca/en/const/annex_e.html, (accessed August 2012).
21
Scott, “Last of The Indian Treaties”, in Ritchie, ed., Scott: Addresses, Essays, 82.
22
Bruce G Trigger, “The Historian’s Indian: Native Americans in Canadian Historical Writing from
Charlevois to the Present,” Canadian Historical Review 67:3 (1986): 315-42.
23
Scott, “Last of The Indian Treaties”, in Ritchie ed., 87.
68
Scott grandly entitled his article “The Last of The Indian Treaties”. Subsequent events
would demonstrate that he was grossly inaccurate in his inflated view of the
undertakings. In the course of the twentieth century, Canada would engage in major
treaties with terms vastly different and more generous from those of Treaty 9 with the
Cree of James Bay in northern Quebec (1975), with the Inuvialuit in the western Arctic
(1984) and with the Nisga’a of north-western British Columbia (1998), to name a few
examples. Further by 1982, Canada changed its constitution to acknowledge the existing
aboriginal and treaty rights of Indigenous peoples in Canada. On paper at least, the
amendments to the constitution represent a significant departure from a policy of
“extinguishment”.
Scott’s Treaty expedition required a large crew to make its way across the north.
In 1905 and 1906, the Treaty expedition team would sometimes consist of twenty-four
men. The Commission held a feast of tea, bannock and bacon at each major community.
Scott and his fellow commissioners were paddled by their Native guides in thirty-twofoot birch bark canoe which carried up to 2,500 pounds of provisions, camp equipment,
and a treasure chest containing $30,000 in small notes for Treaty payments of $8 per
adult. The crew was accompanied by two officers of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
24
Scott was convinced the RCMP officers were of no small significance in establishing
his team’s credibility along the Albany River,
I am bound to say that the latter outshone the members of the commission itself in
the observance of the Indians. The glory of their uniforms and the wholesome fear
of the white man’s law which they inspired spread down the river in advance of
the commission and reached James Bay before the commission. I presume they
were used as a bogey by the Indian mothers, for no children appeared anywhere
until the novelty had somewhat decreased and opinion weakened that the
24
Ibid, 84.
69
magnificent proportions and manly vigor of our protectors were nourished upon a
diet of babies.25
Scott’s attempt at humour for the benefit of his American readers in 1906 reveals the
depth of his arrogance regarding the Treaty 9 Commission.
Scott’s journalism in the Scribner’s article was also riddled with inconsistencies
and contradictions. Scott proclaimed that Native signatories were ignorant while at the
same time describing in some detail the pointed questions directed at the commissioners
in places like Osnaburgh.26
Figure 10 Treaty 9 canoe Albany River 1905, photo by D.C. Scott (courtesy LAC)
Scott, his fellow commissioners and the RCMP officers were guided by a team of
Indigenous guides.27 The large, wind swept lakes, fast moving rivers and sometimes
25
Ibid, 84.
Ibid, 86-7.
27
Ibid, 84-5. Aboriginal guides from north-western Ontario and Red River/Manitoba had extensive
experience guiding British imperial and Canadian official parties. William Butler, intelligence officer to
General Garnet Wolseley during the Red River Expedition of 1870 wrote extensively about his relationship
26
70
tortuous nastawagan, Anishinabe and Cree trails, that linked waters of the Canadian
Shield in the Treaty territory made for arduous travel. Native guides portaged the
elaborate camp equipage in order to keep the distinguished commission comfortable on
the trip meant long and repeated carries over the narrow, rocky, muddy, mosquito
infested trails.
Scott was photographed at the end of one such portage along with the
moustachioed Stewart. Scott appears urbane, out of place on the muddy bank of the Root
River, mosquito netting pulled back from his face while sporting argyle socks pulled up
over his trouser legs. As Stan Dragland ably recounted in his literary analysis of the
Treaty 9 expedition, that single image crystallizes the complicated role of Scott, a
poet/bureaucrat from Ottawa, simultaneously pursuing Canada’s political ends and his
own artistic fulfillment in Anishinabe and Cree territory of northern Ontario in 1905-6.28
with Aboriginal guides from the region in Canada at that time and in 1885 on the Nile River in Egypt when
he accompanied Wolseley again - this time on a failed mission to rescue General Gordon in Khartoum.
See William Francis Butler, The Campaign of the Cataracts: Being a Personal Narrative of the Great Nile
Expedition of 1884-5 (London: S.Low, Morston, Searle & Rivington, 1887), esp. 142-44; Butler, The Great
Lone Land : A Tale of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America (Toronto: Musson Book Co.,
1924); Roy MacLaren, Canadians on the Nile, 1882-1898: Being the Adventures of the Voyageurs on the
Khartoum Relief Expedition and Other Exploits (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1978).
28
Dragland, Floating Voice, 3-5.
71
INTERLOCUTEURS VALABLES: Guides for Scott & Soustelle
On these formative journeys both Scott and Soustelle displayed fascination and
even empathy with certain interlocutors they met along the way. Scott, on the one hand,
was responsible for convincing the Indians to agree to Treaty terms that were at best
reductive and in some respects, duplicitous. However, some of his best, most truthful
writing was inspired by the Treaty 9 experience. In some of Scott’s poetry and prose that
arose from his Treaty experience he demonstrates an affection for the peoples of the north
and a sensitive appreciation for the lands and waters he travelled across.
Likewise, in central Mexico, Soustelle encountered impoverished Mazahua,
Otomí and Pame Indians whose religious festivals, agricultural practices, music and
resilience to a harsh life inspired him. In southern Mexico Soustelle met families of
Lacandon Indians in Chiapas for whom he developed an abiding respect. In particular,
Soustelle spent extended periods in the rain forests of Chiapas in the company of a great
Lacandon hunter and shaman Tchank’in or “anacleto” who would figure prominently in
Soustelle’s youthful account of his journey in Mexique terre indienne in 1936,
C’était un homme grave et plein de dignité que cet “anacleto”, grand causeur mais
sobre de gestes, sa tunique d’une blancheur immaculée, ses cheveux noirs
semblables à la perruque d’un seigneur à la cour du Roi-Soleil. Je ne peux
raconter toutes les attentions qu’il montrait pours ses hôtes; tantôt il apportait des
régimes des bananas, tantôt il roulait avec soin entre ses paumes des feuilles de
tabac pour me confectionner des cigares.30
Translates literally as “valuable interlocutors”. The term was used widely by Soustelle and other agents
of French rule in Algeria to describe Algerian Muslim allies of the French cause. I employ it here to
reference the local Indigenous individuals on which both Soustelle and Scott relied on first in their
formative voyages discussed in this chapter.
30
Soustelle, terre indienne , 227.
29
72
Figure 11 T'chankin c.1934, photo by J.Soustelle (courtesy MqB)
Soustelle ruminated at length about his friendship with the Mayan elder in his first
book. Thirty years later in 1967, while on the lam from French intelligence officers and
international police forces « quelque part en Europe » he paid tribute to the old man again
in the Les quatre soleils.31 This work is a contemplation of the apogee of civilizations and
31
Soustelle, Quatres Soleils, 57-61.
73
their decline. As Soustelle meditated in Les quatre soleils from his Cold War era vantage
point, he would often refer to the Mayan legend recounted to him by T’chankin and others
about worlds ending in a storm of fire and a plague of human-devouring jaguars:32
Nous le savons maintenant : tout soleil est condamné à s’éteindre. Une civilisation
peut succomber sous l’assaut des barbares – les jaguars du premier univers ; elle
peut sombrer dans l’impuissance et la futilité – les hommes sont transformés en
singes ; ou bien s’effondrer sous les coups des forces naturelles – déluge,
tremblement de terre ; ou enfin explorer dans ultime conflagration – la pluie de
feu qui n’est plus, à notre époque, une simple image légendaire. Le mythe
mexicain, expression d’une sagesse antique, rejoint l’inquiétude d’aujourd’hui.33
Through his contemplation of T’chankin, Soustelle pondered the gap between western
civilization and the bush existence of Indigenous people he encountered deep in the
jungles of southern Mexico in 1933-4. In his first book, Soustelle distanced himself from
any affiliation with a romantic notion of the noble savage. His admiration for the
Lacandons was tempered by realism and a rather grim view of human society,
Je ne crois pas avoir embelli à plaisir les conditions de vie des Lacandons, ni leur
caractère. Leur liberté est un es biens qui coutent cher à conserver. Cracher sur la
civilisation materielle est commode, lorsqu’on en jouit. Je crois l’apprécier mieux
que jamais, depuis que j’ai vu ce que signifie réelement, de labeur écrasant et
d’insécurité constante, la vie primitive. Vivre en sauvage, ce n’est pas vivre
insouciant et heureux; il n’y a pas d’hommes heureux sur la terre.
Et cela dit, qui sait si à mon tour déjà en route vers notre civilisation, je ne
pas irai pas bien cher, aussi, ce retour?34
In his journalism and more obliquely in his poetry and prose, Scott profiled
several Indigenous individuals who impressed him favourably in the summers of 1905
and 1906. He extolled the physical strength and bush wisdom of the paddlers. Names of
some of the guides would later crop up as fictional characters in Scott’s short stories and
32
Ibid, 39-92.
Ibid, 12.
34
Soustelle, terre indienne, 253.
33
74
poems. Jimmy Swaine, a Métis guide and fiddler, made the strongest impression on
Scott.35
Figure 12 Jimmy Swaine, 1905 photo by D.C. Scott (courtesy LAC)
Swaine led the team that paddled, poled, carried and cooked as Scott made his way across
the north in 1905. Scott heartily commended Swain to his American readers,
35
Fiddling became an intrinsic part of Métis culture in what became north-western Ontario and parts of
Manitoba, Saskatchwan and Alberta after contact. See Lynn Whidden, Audreen Hourie and Lawrence
Barkwell, “Métis Music and Dance” and Oliver Boulette, “”Red River Jig”: A Fiddle Tune and Dance that
Defines the Métis,” in Barkwell, Leah Dorion and Hourie, eds, Metis Legacy II : Michif Culture, Heritage,
and Folkways. Métis Legacy Series ; v. 2. (Saskatoon: Gabriel Dumont Institute, 2006), 161-172.
75
He is a fine type of the old half-breed race of packers and voyageurs which is fast
disappearing; loyal and disinterested, cautious but fearless, full of the joy of life
which consists in doing and possessed by that other joy of life which dwells in
retrospect, in the telling of old tales, the playing of old tunes, and the footing of
dance steps. Jimmy was enjoying a mighty old age after a mighty youth. He had
been able to carry 600 pounds over a portage nearly a quarter of a mile long. He
had run on snow-shoes with the mail from Moose Factory to Michipicoten, a
distance of 500 miles, in six days, carrying only one blanket, a little hardtack, and
a handful of tea. Now in his sixty-seventh year he was the equal of the best of the
young fellows.36
In addition to running a wilderness crew and carrying, in bare feet, the heavy portage
loads of a man in his twenties, Swaine’s musical abilities held special appeal to the artist
cum Treaty Commissioner. Jimmy Swaine was an accomplished fiddler. Scott writes
fondly of evenings by the campfire hearing Swaine play and later at night in his tent
listening to the Métis fiddler play tunes on his beat up but adequate instrument,
He had scraped the belly and rubbed it with castor oil, and the G string had two
knots in it. But what matter! When Jimmy closed the flap of his tent and drew it
forth out of its blue pine box, I doubt whether any artist in the world had ever
enjoyed a sweeter pang of affection and desire.37
Although Scott, an accomplished pianist then married to the American violinist Belle
Botsford, recognized the humanity in fellow musician Jimmy Swaine, he did not pause in
his steadfast determination to conclude the Crown’s purpose of clearing the way for
Canadian dominance of the north and its Indigenous peoples.
Musiciens, Poetes, Adorateurs
Jacques Soustelle had a keen ethnological interest in music. His mentor Paul
Rivet had instructed his students that music was a bridge between contemporary
36
37
Scott “Last of the Indian Treaties”, in Addresses, Essays, 85.
Ibid.
76
Indigenous folkways and ancient civilizations. In 1932, Soustelle brought a rudimentary
wax cylinder recording device to Mexico.38 He recorded the very high pitched, choral
keening of Mazahua women accompanied by drums, among other instruments. Field
audio recording was a widely practiced by students of Paul Rivet. Germaine Tillion
recorded Berber musicians in the Algerian mountains while the Soustelles were making
recordings in Mexico.39
Soustelle wrote at some length about his audio recording. Often he was
accompanied by the expatriate German engineer and amateur ethnologist Roberto
Weitlaner who worked for a mining concern in Mexico City. In Soustelle’s popular
account of his early days in Mexico, he wrote that sometimes the enterprising audio
engineers provided alcohol to encourage the performances of recalcitrant singers, « Le
seul problème consistait à verser assez pour les faire chanter et assez peu pour ne pas les
assommer complètement… Il est vrai que cette limite paraissait difficile à atteindre. »40
Soustelle well knew that pulque, the fermented juice of the maguey cactus, was a staple
of many festivals and rituals in the Mazahua, Otomi and Pame villages he frequented in
central Mexico. Soustelle participated in the preparation of a yearly festival in San
Bartolo del Llano in 1933. He accompanied musicians on a tortoise shell guitar after he
and his wife Georgette were instructed in ritualistic dance steps by the jefe of a cofradía,
brotherhood, that had a troupe of dancers and musicians in the festival.
In 2008, such recording devices were still on display at the Laboratoire de l’ethnomusicologie at Le Musée
de l’Homme in Paris. There, in a cramped, high-ceilinged room off the main laboratory, hundreds and
hundreds of boxes containing quarter-inch reel-to-reel audio tapes are filed on shelves. One such tape
features the remaining recordings made by la mission Soustelle 1932-4 and, fittingly enough, the recordings
that the young Germaine Tillion made of Berber singers in the Aurès mountains of Algeria.
39
Jacques Soustelle. Audio recording of Mazahua singers. Laboratoire de Ethnomusicologie, Musée de
l’Homme, Paris. Tape 76-11-37 Mission Germaine Tillion dans l’Aurès 1936 and Mission Jacques
Soustelle 1932-4.
40
Soustelle, terre indienne, 73.
38
77
Figure 13 Mazahua drawing of J. Soustelle c.1932 (courtesy MqB)41
As he recalled in Mexique terre indienne, Soustelle sported a skirt made of tiny strips of
metal fashioned for him by the jefe. He wrote,
Un autre motif piqua ma curiosité. C’était un petit bonhomme, de face, deux
paillettes rondes figurant les yeux, et il tenait dans la main droite un objet carré. A
ma demande le capitaine éclata de ce rire violent qui lui était particulier, et
m’expliqua non sans satisfaction que ce bonhomme, c’était moi-même. Et l’objet
carré? Eh bien c’était l’appareil photographique; je trainais toujours et partout,
c’était devenu évidemment mon caractère distinctif aux yeux des Indiens de San
Bartolo del Llano.42
Soustelle’s dance costume was topped off by a crown of feathers. To the amusement of
his Mexican confrères Soustelle donned the costume, « Avec l’aide du chef qui ne se
lassait pas d’admirer son œuvre, je revêtis le costume et me plaçai la couronne sur la tête.
Chacun s’émerveillait de voir un étranger si brave sous ce vêtement. Ce fut un instant
Musée du quai Branly, Paris. Fonds Soustelle – Documents. Dossier 5120. Dessin 71.1933.71.107
executé par le chef des danses de S Bartolo del Llano représentant J. Soustelle
42
Soustelle, terre indienne, 87.
41
78
glorieux. »43 The incident contradicts the received perception of the middle-aged
Soustelle in his native France where he gained a persona as a dour intellectual and
politician in the years after World War II. Clearly, the youthful, sometimes flamboyant
public exuberance of Jacques Soustelle graduate student was subsumed over time by a
poker faced, humourless public presentation. The skirt and the feathered hat from the
cofradía are to be found now in the archives of le Musée du quai Branly in Paris.44
In the extensive chapter of his Mexique terre indienne devoted to music, dance
and ritual Soustelle demonstrated his developing ethnological passion for the living
cultural representations of Indigenous ways. Unlike Scott, who tended to see signs of
métissage as unequivocal symptoms of Aboriginal demise, Soustelle sometimes
expressed his admiration for the Indigenous Mexican genius for cultural absorption and
survival. On other occasions he bemoaned the toll Indigenous languages and folkways
suffered under the official Mexican federal government ideology that embraced a
“cosmic race” of mixed race peoples with Indigenous and European origins.45 Soustelle’s
writings reveal, in turns, admiration, skepticism or confusion over Mexican indigenismo,
the cluster of policy and ideology for incorporation of the Indian in Mexico that was a
hallmark of the post-revolutionary era in Mexico. Soustelle was welcomed to Mexico by
Manuel Gamio, an ethnologist, archaeologist and government mandarin.46 Gamio was a
43
Ibid.
Musée du quai Branly, Paris. Fonds Soustelle – Objets. 71.1933.71.87 jupon; 71.1933.71.104 couronne
de plumes
45
Soustelle, terre indienne, 106-7, 126, 130.
The phrase raza cósmica was coined by Mexican revolutionary philosopher, educator and politician José
Vasconcelos in an essay originally published in 1925. See José Vasconcelos, Obras Completas (México:
Libreros Mexicanos Unidos, 1957). Vasconcelos and Didier Tisdel Jaén. The Cosmic Race: A Bilingual
Edition (Baltimore, Md: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997; 1979).
44
46
Soustelle, terre indienne, 18; Soustelle letter to Paul Rivet from Toluca, Mexico November 30, 1932.
MNHN.
79
leader of an activist ethnology and assertive indigenismo of the 1930s that sought to
redeem and valorize Mexico’s Indian past in the building of a mestizo nation.47
Throughout the half century that spans Soustelle’s writing about Mexico, be it academic
monograph, journalism, table-top art tome or travelogue - there flows a steady current of
passionate curiosity and love for the country and its people. These sentiments that are
well expressed in his first published work on Mexico Mexique terre indienne published in
1936. Soustelle described an enthralling moonlit night of music in an Otomí village in
1933. An occasion on which Soustelle, wife Georgette and Robert Weitlaner were taken
to an impromptu outdoor concert in a mountain valley of central Mexico,
…on était emporté comme par un charme… Le violon avait débuté par un motif
assez court, et il le prenait, le reprenait, le transfigurait, paraissait l’abandonner,
puis au moment où on le croyait perdu, pas du tout! le motif revenait, enlacé à luimême mille fois, tressé comme une natte par les mains patients des
Indiennes…Parfois un indigène du cercle élevait brusquement la voix et chantait
trios ou quatre vers sur un ton aigu d’incantation, sans que personne parût
l’entendre. En fait, personne ne semblait rien entendre ni faire attention à rien,
nous étions tous comme pétrifiés, laissant aller nos pensées emportées par le vent
au gré des deux musiciens. Si j’en juge par moi, ces pensées étaient chargées
d’une tristesse sereine ou plutôt d’une indifférence heureuse, comme si nous
étions devenus des oiseaux entrainés sans savoir où par quelque grande tempête…
J’ai encore ce chant-là dans les oreilles quand j’écris, ou quand je pense à
Jiliapan. Il se lie pour moi à la vision d’une vallée verte au creux des montagnes
hostiles, et d’une groupe compact d’hommes, à peau brune où l’on est absorbé,
retenu, un des leurs.48
Such are the memories of his youth in Mexico that Soustelle would carry forward through
the years. In future, he referred to Mexico as his second home.49
Her Fierce Soul Hates Her Breath
Duncan Campbell Scott’s travels with the fiddling guide Jimmy Swaine in 1905
ushered in a plethora of works by Scott in which culture and ethnicity intersect. Scott
47
Claudio Lomnitz-Adler, Deep Mexico, silent Mexico: an anthropology of nationalism (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 2001), 250-7.
48
Soustelle, Mexique terre indienne, 66-67.
49
Jacques Soustelle, Envers et contre tout (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1947), 216.
80
expressed admiration for Swaine, a man who clearly incarnated both Indigenous and
European traits. That stands in contradiction to much of his literary output which generally
privileges the European and predicts doom for what he considered the darker, more
disturbed or infantile Indigenous element. In his Indian poems, Scott sometimes exalts the
prowess of a “weird and waning” race while predicting its demise.50 Indeed a number of
Scott’s pivotal poems that brush on the subjects of miscegenation and trans- cultural lives,
“The Onondaga Madonna”, “Indian Place Names”, “A Scene at Lake Manitou” and “The
Halfbreed Girl” among them, express no sympathy nor reveal little understanding of how
Indigenousness might be woven into and preserved in a “civilized”
Canada. Such poems suggest that aboriginality, whether savage or noble, must inevitably
wither in face of the progress of the Canadian nation.
In the fall of 1906, immediately following the second treaty expedition, Scott
published Via Borealis in a handsome edition featuring reproductions of wood
engravings by the Canadian artist Alfred Howard.51 The publicity notice for the work
proclaimed,
“Via Borealis”, slender though its contents, will surely enhance the poetic
reputation of Mr. Duncan Campbell Scott. His art here is to be seen in its fullest
perfection, and will be a revelation to many readers already familiar with his
work. This little book will take flight on the wings of Christmas and will settle in
many homes beyond the sea.
The seven poems it contains were written this summer during an extensive
canoe trip which the author made through the wilderness of new Ontario.52
50
Duncan Campbell Scott “The Onondaga Madonna” in Selected Poetry of Duncan Campbell Scott, edited
by Glenn Clever (Ottawa: Tecumseh Press, 1974), 14.
51 Jonathan Franklin, “Book Illustration by Canadian Painters to 1916,” National Gallery of Canada,
Library. national.gallery.ca/pdf/exn16_e.pdf (accessed April 2012). “Howard was an
example of a new breed of artist‐designers in various media, including illuminations
and wallpaper, and was an active exhibitor with the Toronto Art Students’ League,
which published distinctive calendars between 1893 and 1904.”
52
Duncan Campbell Scott. Via Borealis illustrations by A.H. Howard (Toronto: Tyrell and Co. Toronto,
1906).
First edition at Thomas Fisher rare Book Library, University of Toronto.
81
Significantly, the publicity material does not state the actual purpose of Scott’s “canoe
trip”. A reader unaware of his civil service duties might have well imagined the intrepid
poet finding his inspiration by campfires he had lit himself on evenings following
arduous days of paddling. There is evidence that Scott and his friend Pelham Edgar did
paddle together in evenings in a small birch bark canoe and occasionally joined in the
paddling from their positions in the freighter canoe.53 However, Scott and his fellow
Commissioners and officials usually refrained from paddling.
Via Borealis included a poem entitled “The Half-Breed Girl”. The poem almost
certainly owes its inspiration to the Treaty expedition. It is likely among the poems that
Scott began to compose en route. Edgar made several references to Scott’s poetic output
on the 1906 journey in both his journalistic account and in his memoirs, “Duncan caught
a poem as we were going through Island Lake and is still reeling it in. I have not seen it
yet. This morning he read two splendid stories to me that he has written lately.”54 Edgar
also refers to Scott’s preoccupation with the camera.55
Large reproductions of Howard’s drawings in Lorne Pierce papers, Queen’s University Archives.
53
Pelham Edgar. “Twelve Hundred Miles By Canoe. Among Indians in Northern Waters,” Canada: The
Illustrated Weekly Journal for all Interested in The Dominion, Vol. IV (November 24, 1906 – March 16,
1907); Edgar, “Travelling With A Poet” chap. 5 in Across My Path (Toronto: Ryerson, 1952), 59-73.
54
Edgar, Across My Path, 60. In his chapter entitled “Travelling With A Poet,” Edgar relies on expanded
entries from the journal he kept in the summer of 1906. The journal entries were initially published in the
magazine Canada: The Illustrated Weekly Journal for all Interested in The Dominion in 1906-7.
55
Edgar, Across My Path, 62.
82
Figure 14 Women at Brunswick House 1906, photo by D.C. Scott (courtesy LAC)
“The Half-Breed Girl” well reflects Scott’s broodings about the north,
miscegenation and the merits of “civilization” and the Indigenous savagery of the
Canadian north. Its protagonist is caught between worlds. Like Jimmy Swaine, Scot’s
imagined Métisse female is to be admired for her adaptability to western norms while
maintaining traces of Indigenousness. As a woman, she is regarded by Scott an agent of
change via intermarriage. The conflict within Scott’s mind is apparent in his poetic
lament for the romanticized savage past that he believes haunts her being:
The Half-Breed Girl
She is free of the trap and the paddle,
The portage and the trail,
But something behind her savage life
Shines like a fragile veil…
But she cannot learn the meaning
Of the shadows in her soul,
83
The lights that break and gather,
The clouds that part and roll,
The reek of rock-built cities,
Where her fathers dwelt of yore,
The gleam of loch and shealing,
The mist on the moor…
She wakes in the stifling wigwam,
Where the air is heavy and wild,
She fears for something or nothing
With the heart of a frightened child…
A voice calls from the rapids,
Deep, careless and free,
A voice that is larger than her life
Or than her death shall be.
She covers her face with her blanket,
Her fierce soul hates her breath,
As it cries with a sudden passion
For life or death.56
The poem has deservedly attracted the attention of some of the leading critics of Scott’s
poetry.57 It puts into opposition the “civilized” traits the girl has from her Scottish side
with the “savage” elements of her Indian forebears. The poem reveals that Scott shared a
racial ideology with the majority of Canada’s elite during this period. The ideology
created the structuring assumption of the poem: that a “half-breed” girl’s soul must be
the site of racial conflict. Her Scottish ancestry echoes in her soul bespeaking a civilized
world that can only exist in conflict with her Indian background and lifestyle of netting
fish and living in bush camps. Scott refers to the “frail traces of kindred kindness” that
56
Duncan Campbell Scott. “The Half-Breed Girl” excerpted from Selected Poetry of Duncan Campbell
Scott edited by Glenn Clever (Ottawa: The Tecumseh Press, 1974), 43.
57
D.M.R. Bentley, “Shadows in the Soul: Racial Haunting in the Poetry of Duncan Campbell Scott,”
University of Toronto Quarterly, Volume 75, Number 2 (Spring 2006), 753-60; E.K. Brown, “Memoir” in
Selected Poems of Duncan Campbell Scott, (Toronto: The Ryerson Press, 1951), xix; Stan Dragland,
Floating Voice: Duncan Campbell Scott and the Literature of Treaty 9 (Concord, ON: Anansi, 1994),
18,48,50,52,76,189,190,191-2,197.
84
haunt her as she awakes in a “stifling wigwam.” According to Scott, her mixed ancestry
leads to confusion and despair, “she cannot learn the meaning – of the shadows in her
soul”. Late at night with stars peering through the tent flap “like the eyes of dead souls”,
the girl is poetically forsaken by Scott, abandoned to a state trapped between worlds, “her
fierce soul hates her breath,…”. When one considers this poem alongside Scott’s
admiration for Swaine, a fundamental contradiction arises: Scott sees merit in the male,
musically inclined guide who literally charts a course between societies. However, in this
particular poem, and others, Scott seems incapable of evoking the same successful
possibility for his female protagonist who must, in Scott’s view, suffer a dual identity.
The poem reflects Scott’s primary concern with Indians: their inevitable
disappearance via an absorption into Canadian life. In “The Last of the Indian Treaties”
Scott reported to his American readers on a process that he believed he was witnessing
first hand along the Albany River in 1905. Although he was impressed by the religiosity
of some of his guides, he did not believe they would integrate Christianity so much as be
inexorably overwhelmed by it,
The crew that took the commission from Moose Factory to Abitibi were constant
in their vespers and every evening recited a litany, sang a hymn and made a
prayer. There was something primitive and touching in their devotion, and it
marks an advance, but these Indians are capable of leaving a party of travellers
suddenly, returning to Moose Factory in dudgeon if anything displeases them, and
the leader of the prayers got very much the better of one of the party in an affair
of peltries. But any forecast of Indian civilization which looks for final results in a
generation or two is doomed to disappointment. Final results may be attained in,
say, in four centuries by the merging of the Indian race with the whites, and all
these four things – treaties, teachers, missionaries, and traders – with whatever
benefits or injuries they bring in their train, aid in making an end.58
Scott’s predication of “an end” for Indian people changed according to his audience. In
1921 as Deputy Superintendant General of Indian Affairs, Scott delivered an extensive
58
Scott, “Last of the Indian Treaties,” in Essays, Addresses, 92.
85
briefing before the Parliamentary committee on Indian Affairs. At that session Scott
declared that he wanted to end “the Indian problem” and that the policies of the
government he served would ensure that there were no more Indians in the “body politic”
within fifty years. Scott predicted that the toughening of rules regarding compulsory
attendance at residential schools and the loss of status under the Indian Act for Indians
who left the reserve under certain circumstances or for the children of women who
married whites, would speed the assimilation project.59
In Scott’s day, he and fellow adherents of the assimilation creed believed that
Christian religion and government policy would dovetail to achieve “civilization”. As
historian John S. Milloy has demonstrated, the Canadian government inherited colonial
policy that featured as, “Its central mechanism, the partnership of Christianity and
civilization - - represented by the joint presence and activity of Departmental agents and
missionaries on Canadian reserves.” 60 Although Scott was the son of a Methodist
missionary, he did not display an active Christianity. His poetry contains only infrequent
overtly Christian sentiments. However, there are recurrent evocations of spirit, of soul
and ghostly presences as in The Piper of Arll. Scott’s father did missionary work among
Indians prior to his son’s birth.61 In 1883, Reverend William Scott wrote a report to the
Superintendant General of Indian Affairs about the background to an Aboriginal land
rights dispute in Oka, Quebec, an aspect of a festering conflict that turned bloody more
than a century later in the summer of 1990.62 However, Duncan Campbell Scott did not
Scott’s briefing notes and statement on enfranchisement LAC RG-10, Vol. 6810, file 470-2-3.
John S. Milloy, “Second Thoughts: The Great Civilization Debate 1836-1840”, chap 4. (Ph.D. diss.,
Oxford 1981), 227.
61
E.K. Brown, “Memoir” in Selected Poems, xi-xiii.
62
Reverend William Scott, “Report Relating to the Affairs of the Oka Indians Made to the Superintendent
General of Indian Affairs,” LAC-BAC G10a RG10 Vol. 725 William Scott, Oka Indian Report.
59
60
86
entirely share his father’s religious convictions. He never claimed that he was driven to
his ‘day job’ out of a personal sense of Christian duty. He was not a regular Church-goer
as an adult.
In 1893, two years after his father’s death, Scott published “In The Country
Courtyard – To The memory of My Father”.63 The poem is a meditation on death and
loss set in a rural church cemetery in the evening. Although the poet allows that “God’s
own weeds are fair in God’s own way”, Scott does not use the occasion to celebrate,
share or take comfort in his father’s Christian faith. Further, as he approaches the poem’s
conclusion he summons a contemplation that, under the circumstances, is remarkable for
its absence of Christian religious sentiment,
And now I leave the dead with you, O night;
You wear the semblance of their fathomless state,
For you we long when the day’s fire is great,
And when the stern life is cruellest in his might,
Of death we dream;
A country of dim plain and shadowy height,
Crowned in strange stars and silences supreme.
Given what appears to be an almost agnostic approach to life, it is striking that Scott the
bureaucrat always privileged strict Christianity as a lever in Indian policy. In his prose,
Scott repeatedly invokes the fundamental place of Christianity in Indian policy.64 Scott
often fretted over the contest between Christianity and “savagery” in the Indian heart.
This is tellingly expressed in a poem written following an 1898 Departmental journey
that Scott took near the shores of northern Georgian Bay and the north-east corner of
Lake Superior in northern Ontario, an area just south of the Treaty 9 territory he visited in
63
64
Scott, Selected Poems, Brown ed., 107.
Scott, “Last of the Indian Treaties”, Scribner’s 582-3.
87
1905-6. “Night Hymns on Lake Nipigon” describes a moonlit paddle of a canoe brigade
in which singing takes on a tone of syncretism,
Sing we the ancient hymns of the churches,
Chanted first in old-world nooks of the desert,
While in the wild, pellucid Nipigon reaches
Hunted the savage.
Now have the ages met in the Northern midnight,
And in the lonely, loon-haunted Nipigon reaches
Rises the hymn of triumph and courage and comfort,
Adeste Fideles.
Tones that were fashioned when the faith brooded in
darkness,
Joined with the sonorous vowels in the noble Latin
Now are married with the long-drawn Ojibwa,
Uncouth and mournful.65
Scott’s denigration of the Anishinabe (Ojibwa) language as “uncouth” contradicts Scott’s
own At Gull Lake, August 1810, also published in 1935, about the beautiful Keejigo, an
Anishinabe (Saulteaux) woman,66
As Earth abandons herself
To the sun and the thrust of the lightning.
Quiet were all the leaves of the poplars,
Breathless the air under their shadow,
As Keejigo spoke of these things to her heart
In the beautiful speech of the Saulteaux.67
Scott’s poetic output is replete with such contradictions. The calm vividness of his
portrait photography from the Canadian bush is matched by many of his poems, including
some of the Indian poems. It is tempting but unwise to dismiss all his work as the
anachronistic, hateful outpourings of a Victorian out of step even with his own time.
Scott poses far more difficulty than that. As we will read in a later chapter “At Gull Lake,
65
Scott, Selected Poetry, 34.
Anyone who has had the pleasure of listening to the musical sounds of fluent Anishnabemowin will attest
to its lyrical qualities.
67
Scott, Selected Poetry, 96.
66
88
August 1810” could well speak to fundamental changes in Scott’s personal life and
political outlook.
As for “Night Hymns on Lake Nipigon”, the scene of paddling Lake Nipigon at
midnight rings with poetic and practical truth. It is often best to paddle large lakes late at
night or just before sunrise – the wind is generally light. Lake Nipigon is a huge,
infamously treacherous body of water for an open canoe without decking. Also, any
experienced paddler knows well the comforting aspect of singing to pace the extreme
exertion required in hours of paddling, particularly on a lake. “Night Hymns on Lake
Nipigon” is a truthful, evocative poem about canoe travel, regardless of its religious and
racial sentiments.
Soft with the silver drip of the regular paddles
Falling in rhythm, timed with the liquid, plangent
Sounds from the blades where the whirlpools break and are
Carried
Down into darkness;
Each long cadence, flying like a dove from her shelter
Deep in the shadow, wheels for the throbbing moment,
Poises in utterance, returning in circles of silver
To nest in the silence.
All wild nature stirs with the infinite, tender
Plaint of a bygone age whose soul is eternal,
Bound in the lonely phrases that thrill and falter
Back into quiet.68
The poem endures. It found new life in the 1980s when filmmakers wed it to paintings by
the great Anishinabe artist Norval Morrisseau in a video.69
68
Scott, Selected Poetry, 35.
Canadian Independent Filmmakers Cooperative. “Night Hymns on Lake Nipigon – poem by Duncan
Campbell Scott with paintings by Norval Morrisseau,” Directed and produced by Trevor Davies and
George Muncey, reading by John Arblaster, 1972. ISN#108498 VLTSLF#8903-5674 LAC-BAC.
69
89
As a young scholar travelling in Mexico, Jacques Soustelle reflected at length on
the religiosity of Mexican Indigenous peoples. In both his first book Mexique terre
indienne and in the journalism he penned under the pseudonym Jean Duriez, Soustelle
took a very negative view of the Catholic church’s responsibility in the subjugation of
Mexican Indians,
Ainsi l’introduction du christianisme au Mexique n’a nullement signifié,
contrairement à ce que l’on entend répéter sans cesse, une élévation de la culture
des Indiens. Avec souplesse et diplomatie, le clergé a su conquérir sur ceux-ci une
énorme influence, et cette conquête a été son seul but.70
Soustelle was also very skeptical about the “conversions” that the church claimed.
In his ethnological work he repeatedly discovered vestiges of Aztec and Otomí religious
practices in the fiestas, songs and in the visual representations in oratorios, small private
chapels throughout central Mexico. He detected the traces of pre-Colombian beliefs as he
studied the Otomí language by establishing links in the music and poetry he observed
first-hand in the 1930s with the foundational texts of Mexica people recorded by Friar
Bernardino de Sahagún and his peers in the decades following the sixteenth-century
Spanish conquest of Mexico. He observed that descriptions of natural events in Otomí
were often related to the deity who was thought by the pre-Hispanic Otomí to control
such events,
La phrase: “Il y a eu une éclipse du lune” se traduit par “L’Honorable Dame Lune
est morte”. On comprendra pourquoi de demeure sceptique sur la profondeur de
l’évangélisation chez les indigènes du Mexique.71
He also carefully observed and documented the non-Christian practices of the Lacandon
Maya in the rain forests of Chiapas in southern Mexico. The contrast between Scott and
Jean Duriez (pseudonym for Jacques Soustelle) “La question religieuse au Mexique” Pt. 1MASSES
(Paris No. 9, September 1933), 10-13.
71
Soustelle, terre indienne, 46-7.
70
90
Soustelle on this matter, between Canadian Indian policy and emergent values of French
ethnology infused with indigenismo, could hardly be more stark. In the left-wing
publications MASSES and Spartacus, Soustelle wrote against those among the French
political right and the French Catholic church who bemoaned the anti-clerical excesses of
the Mexican revolution. Soustelle insisted the revolution responded however imperfectly
and at times bloodily to centuries of Catholic oppression,
Et tel Français moyen, ne sachant rien de la révolution mexicaine ni de son dernier
chef, le général Calles, a pourtant appris son nom comme celui d’un tyran et d’un
Néron moderne. Pas une voix ne s’est élevée pour remettre les choses en places
pour étudier et exposer clairement dans ses origines comme dans son
développement présent le “conflit religieux”.72
Soustelle implored his readers to appreciate the tenacity and adaptive genius of
Indigenous religions in Mexico. Soustelle of the 1930s, while a man of the left and an
anti-fascist, was not a Marxist.73 While he was not religious himself, he insisted that
religious freedom should be a right of citizenship in a modern state. As a young man, he
was adamant in his support of religious diversity in Mexico; as a middle-aged politician
he argued for respect for Islam and the religious rights of Christian and Jewish minorities
in l’Algérie française. Soustelle seemed to relish seizing on what he perceived as the
limitations of Catholic hegemony among Mexican Indians,
Tous les Indiens du Mexique, à l’exception de quelques tribus
inaccessibles dans les forêts et les montagnes comme les Lacandons, sont
nominalement catholiques et se considèrent comme tels… Mais ce
« christianisme » mérite examen. Avant la conquête, les indigènes du Mexique
possédaient des religions hautement élaborées au point de vue théologique et
rituel et solidement ancrés dans leur vie quotidienne. Les missionnaires se
rendirent bientôt compte de la difficulté de les supplanter entièrement : ils
trouvèrent préférable, avec la souplesse de la clergé de fabriquer une sorte de
Duriez (J.Soustelle), “Question religieuse,” 10-11.
Nicole Racine, “Jacques Soustelle” in Jean Maitre, Dictionnaire Biographique Du Mouvement Ouvrier
Français – Quatrième partie 1914-1939 de la Première à la Seconde Guerre Mondiale, Tome 41 Rova à
Szy (Paris: Les Éditions Ouvrières, 1992), 390-1.
72
73
91
« mixte ». en adaptant les dogmes catholiques aux croyances indigènes, et viceversa.74
Conversely Scott in his early Indian poems and in statements on behalf of the
Indian Department never considered a positive outcome in a mixing of Indigenous and
western religions. Yet perhaps even the up-and-coming functionary of the 1905-6 Treaty
Commission perceived something more admirable at work in Indian culture. These
inklings surfaced in some of Scott’s final poems and short stories in which Indian
characters are featured. In 1906, one detects a grudging undercurrent of sympathy in
Scott for the difficult transition that Anishinabe people were undergoing at that time.
“The Last of the Indian Treaties” concludes with Scott’s recounting of an encounter he
had near the mouth of the Albany River at James Bay with an Indian man who had
ventured from the deep bush to meet the commissioners,
The James Bay Treaty will always be associated in my mind with the figure of an
Indian who came in from Attawapiskat to Albany just as we were ready to leave.
The pay-lists and the cash had been securely packed for an early start next
morning, when this wild fellow drifted into camp. Père Fafard, he said, thought we
might have some money for him. He did not ask for anything, he stood,
smiling slightly. He seemed about twenty years of age, with a face of great beauty
and intelligence, and eyes that were wild with a sort of surprise – shy at his novel
position and proud that he was of some importance. His name was Charles
Wabinoo. We found it on the list and gave him his eight dollars. When he felt the
new crisp notes he took a crucifix from his breast, kissed it swiftly, and made a
fugitive sign of the cross. “From my heart I thank you,” he said. There was the
Indian at the best point of a transitional state, still wild as a lynx, with all the lore
and instinct of his race undimmed, and possessed by the simplest rule of the
Christian life, as yet unspoiled by the arts of sly lying, paltry cunning, and the
lower vices which come from contact with such of our debased manners and
customs as come to him in the wilderness.75
As a Treaty Commissioner and later as Deputy Superintendant General of Indian
Affairs, Scott stubbornly maintained that the “transitional state” for Indians must lead to
74
75
Soustelle, « question religieuse ,»10.
Scott, “Last of The Indian Treaties”, in Essays, addresses, ed., 93.
92
absolute incorporation into Canadian society. As he matured as a poet and writer of short
stories, more nuanced and complex narratives emerged.76 The short stories, “Expiation”,
“Spirit River”, “Vengeance is Mine”, “Labrie’s Wife” and “Vain Shadows” all revolve
around relations between fur traders and Indians.77 “Expiation” is the tale of a trader who
ostracizes himself for cruelly mistreating a loyal Indian servant and contributing to his
death. This tragic and well-wrought story is one of the very few occasions in which Scott’s
fictional work deals with white guilt. “Spirit River” is set in a fictional village on the shore
of Lake Superior where a multicultural cast of Indians, Métis and southern European
immigrants interact. The fictional Spirit River is a believable imagined turn-of- thecentury version of towns like Schreiber, Marathon and Jackfish on Lake Superior’s
northern shore. There is perhaps a link between these artistic renderings and Scott’s
concluding vignette in “The Last of the Indian Treaties”. Scott’s muted admiration for
Charles Wabinoo of Attawapiskat is bound up in a sense of Victorian imperial superiority
tempered by artistic curiosity and a humanism that Scott often squelched in his
governmental pursuits.
That humanism and artistic force emerged in some of the later Indian poems. A
Scene At Lake Manitou, published in 1935, is a depiction of the grief of an Indian mother
over her dead son – a grief that Scott could fully appreciate having lost his twelve year old
daughter in 1907; the aforementioned At Gull Lake: August, 1810 tells of the
heartbreak and eventual murder of Keesigo, a beautiful Anishinabe (Salteaux) woman in
76
For valuable contributions to this theme, see Dragland, Floating Voice, 131-52 ;
Elizabeth Waterston. “The Missing Face: Five Short Stories by Duncan Campbell Scott” Studies in
Canadian Literature, Vol. 1, 2, (1976), 223-29.
http://www.lib.unb.ca/Texts/SCL/bin/get.cgi?directory=vol1_2/&filename=waterston.htm (accessed July
2009)
77
Duncan Campbell Scott, Selected Stories of Duncan Campbell Scott (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press,
1975), 11-26, 75-110.
93
love with a trader from the Orkneys; and finally, Lines in Memory of Edmund Morris,
published in 1916 and referred to earlier in this work, pays tribute to the painter who
briefly accompanied the Treaty Commission near Chapleau and Biscotasing, Ontario in
the summer of 1906. Edmund Morris drowned in 1913.78 In his poem, Scott compared
his deceased friend to Akoose, a great prairie chieftain. 79
Figure 15 Edmund Morris & subject 1906 photo by D.C. Scott (courtesy LAC)
Lines in Memory of Edmund Morris encapsulates the Scott conundrum. In the poem,
Scott elegantly memorializes a dear deceased friend by evoking the prowess of a great
plains hunter. No doubt some of Scott’s poems express vile racism; others are among the
most vivid artistic depictions written by a non-aboriginal artist about what appeared to
Scott to be remote parts of North America and its original peoples. As Edward W. Said
argued, artists of empire more often than not reflect imperial values. He wrote about one
great artist of the British Raj, “What a sobering and inspiring thing it is therefore not to
just read one’s own side as it were, but also grasp how a great artist like Kipling (few
78
Titley, Narrow Vision, 28.
Duncan Campbell Scott, “Lines In Memory of Edmund Morris”, originally published in Scott’s Lundy’s
Lane and Other Poems (Doran, New York, 1916); also Scott, Selected Poetry, 64.
79
94
more imperialist and reactionary than he) rendered India with such skill.”80 Duncan
Campbell Scott was an artist in the employ of a fledgling nation state imbued with British
imperial values. Lines in Memory of Edmund Morris in its way is respectful of
Indigenous ways. Nevertheless, the attributes of Akoose are of the past, the splendid,
primeval, aboriginal, mythic past of Scott’s imagination. Confronted with the real,
breathing fully human Charles Wabinoo in 1905, Scott sees vestiges of Indigenous
nobility, “still wild as a lynx”, but has forebodings of how such character will be
diminished in a process of cultural transition. Scott’s ideology dictated that the man in
transition must surrender. Akoose, however, will live forever in Scott’s poetry.81
Scott had a formative encounter of a more psychologically unsettling nature during
the Treaty voyage of 1905. After he and his companions left the rail line at Dinorwic,
Ontario, they began an arduous canoe journey upstream to the headwaters of the Albany
River. En route, the Treaty Commissioners decided to stop at the Lac Seul post. Given
that federal representatives of the rank of Scott and Samuel made infrequent trips to
remote Indian country, Scott also decided to pay a visit to the local Treaty 3 reserve.
Treaty 3 had been signed in 1873. It covered the North-West Angle near the present day
Ontario-Manitoba border. Like Treaty 9, the earlier Treaty had been formulated to ease
westward Canadian expansion – in this instance the passage of the Canadian Pacific
Railway to the west.82 He learned from a trader located at the post there that Indians
camped elsewhere on the lake were holding a Whitedog Feast. Anishinabe people held
such feasts for various reasons. Ethnologists and First Nations elders recount that hopes of
curing sickness and seeking success in warfare were among the
80
Edward W. Said. Culture and Imperialism (New York, Vintage Books, 1994), xxi.
Personal communication Kenneth Mills, Toronto.
82
Miller, Compact, Contract, 167-70.
81
95
motivations.83 On July 6, 1905, members of the Lac Seul band were feasting likely in
hopes of warding off illness. One of the Dominion Police Officers with the Commission,
Joseph L.Vanasse submitted an account of the proceedings to a magazine a few years
after the event. He described signs of ill heath at Lac Seul,
Here was a centenarian couple sitting on the ground under their tent; there was a
four-year-old boy stretched on the ground, the poor little fellow was dying of
consumption. 84
Under such circumstances, goods and money would be collected as payment for the
medicine person holding the feast. The Anishinabe of the Treaty 9 region also practiced
shaking tent ceremonies in which medicine people would seek visions inside a wigwam or
tent. During such ceremonies, the structure would often begin to shake violently as the
fasting medicine person received visions. Sweats in different tents, in which water would
be poured on rocks inside a tightly sealed tent or wigwam to produce steam and vapour to
cleanse the body and purify the spirit, sometimes accompanied these ceremonies. Sweats
83
D.M.R. Bentley “Shadows in the Soul: Racial Haunting in the Poetry of Duncan Campbell
Scott”.University of Toronto Quarterly, Volume 75, Number 2, Spring 2006, 760-64; Dragland, Floating
Voice, 22,30, 155, 155-63, 171; For an overview of spiritual practices in the approximate area see
Chistopher Vecsey, Traditional Ojibwa Religion and its Historical Changes (Philadelphia: American
Philosophical Society, 1983); James Redsky and James R. Stevens, Great Leader of the Ojibway: MisQuona-Queb (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1972); George Nelson, Jennifer S. H. Brown, and Robert
Brightman. "The Orders of the Dreamed": George Nelson on Cree and Northern Ojibwa Religion and
Myth, 1823, edited by Jennifer S.H. Brown and Robert Brightman, (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba
Press, 1988; Edward S. Rogers, The Round Lake Obibwa (Toronto: Published by the Ontario Department
of Lands and Forests for he Royal Ontario Museum, 1962) Rogers spent ample time in the Round Lake
area, north of Lac Seul, at a time that Ojibwa spiritual practices were widely remembered and practised by
elders. His work remains fundamental to the understanding of Indigenous peoples in that area. A white dog
sacrifice is also part of traditional Iroquoian practice. See also Elisabeth Tooker, “The Iroquois White Dog
Sacrifice in the latter part of the Eighteenth Century,” Ethnohistory 12,no. 2 (Spring 1965): 129-140 as cited
in Titley, Narrow Vision, 111, note 4.
84
Joseph L. Vanasse “The White Dog Feast” The Canadian Magazine (Toronto: Vol. 30, No. 1, Nov.
1907), 62.
96
were designed to open the mind for the reception of an enhanced perception of life and
the cosmos. Such ceremonies are practised by Anishinabe presently.85
The events of July 6, 1905 profoundly affected Duncan Campbell Scott. There
exist three written accounts of the day’s events: those of Scott himself, co-Commissioner
Samuel Stewart and the police offer Vanasse. There appears to be no record, written or
oral, of how the day’s events were perceived by the Anishinabe participants.
Approximately twenty years later these events inspired Scott’s most disturbing Indian
poem, Powassan’s Drum, published in 1926. That poem expresses Scott’s anxiety over
Native spirituality.
The official report of the Treaty Commission, co-signed by Scott, Stewart and
McMartin of Ontario makes scant mention of the day in question, “The afternoon of the
6th was spent in a visit to the Lac Seul Reserve in an attempt to discourage the dances and
medicine feast which were being held upon the reserve.” 86 In 1905 many Indigenous
religious rites were illegal in Canada. Scott and his fellow commissioner Stewart
extended the intent of a law directed primarily at the west coast ‘potlatch’ and the sun
dance of the prairie peoples to sacred activities of the Anishinabe in the woodlands.87
However, the other accounts are more ample. In his personal journal, Samuel Stewart
85
Jennifer S. H. Brown, "I Wish to Be as I See You": An Ojibwa-Methodist Encounter in Fur Trade
Country, Rainy Lake, 1854-1855,” Arctic Anthropology 24: 1987, 19-31. Brown and Maureen Matthews,
“Fair Wind: Medicine and Consolation on the Berens River,” Journal of the Canadian Historical Association
1994 4: 55-74; Maureen Matthews and Roger Roulette, “Fair Wind’s Drum: Maamiwan Obaajigewin”, in
Jennifer S. H. Brown and Elizabeth Viberts (eds.), Reading Beyond Words (Peterborough, Ontario:
Broadview Press, 1996), 330-59; The author witnessed a spiritual sweat ceremony involving medicine
people, political leaders, elders and visitors from the Republic of South Africa in 1997 at the Sagkeeng First
Nation on the Winnipeg River in Manitoba. See also Christopher Vecsey, Traditional Ojibwa Religion and
its Historical Changes (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1983).
86
Government of Canada, The James Bay Treaty – Treaty No. 9 (Made in 1905 and 1906) and Adhesions
Made in 1929 and 1930 LAC-BAC RG10 VOL.3033,235,225, P 4.
87
Katherine Pettipas, Severing the Ties that Bind: Government Repression of Indigenous Religious
Ceremonies on the Prairies (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 1994), 123-4, 163-4; Titley, Narrow
Vision, 67, 162-83.
97
produced a detailed report, one of the longest entries in the personal journal that Stewart
kept through the Treaty 9 voyages during summers of 1905 and 1906.
Before arriving at the post we had heard the sound of a drum some distance up the
Lake, and we now learned that that was a medicine drum that was being used at a
“Dog Feast” which was being held on the reserve about 8 miles distant.
As certain of the proceedings connected with the feast are contrary to law, we
decided to go to the reserve and endeavour to put a stop to them. Henry Kau-agee,
Chief of the Lac Seul Band, who had come to meet us, informed us that he had
used his influence to the upmost to prevent the feast from being held but that the
majority of the band was against him in regard to this matter. Accompanied by the
Chief and Mr. Mackenzie we left about noon for the reserve and arrived there
about 1pm. Our approach to the reserve created not little excitement among the
Indians who were assembled on a hill overlooking the lake. This excitement was
to a great extent occasioned by seeing the two policemen in uniform in the canoe,
and also from the fact that we formed a rather large party evidently intent upon
important business. On landing Mr. Scott speaking for the Commissioners
demanded to see the Conjuror. For a time the Indians professed ignorance as to
the whereabouts of this important personage but the Chief at last located him for
us. The man was a short, stout-built Indian and it was soon very evident that he
had all the Indians under his control. He was very diplomatic in his answers to the
questions asked of him and would not commit himself by a promise to
discontinue the practice of conjuring. We learned that his name was Nistonaqueb,
and that he was considered to have great skill in driving out the evil spirits from
those afflicted with any kind of disease. We heard that Nistonaqueb made a good
living by his conjuring but he professed to be giving his services for free and out
of compassion for those who were suffering from various ailments. The goods
and money received by him were used to appease the evil spirits that were
tormenting those for whom his services were called into requisition. He also said
that he was acting under instructions from Pow-wassang the head Conjuror of the
district who would visit him with diverse pains and penalties if he neglected to
hold these Dog Feasts. Nistonaqueb showed great diplomacy in the manner in
which he conducted his case. We could not but be surprised at the wisdom shown
by him in the replies given to certain questions and the manner in which he
avoided to answer others. We gave the Indian a lecture on the folly of their
actions conduct and told them that their actions for the future would be carefully
watched. Afterwards we invited them all to come to the post in the evening
where a good meal would be given them. We arrived back at the Post at 4 PM and
found that Mrs. Mackenzie had an excellent dinner ready for us. We were sorry
that Mr. Scott was not able to partake of the good things provided which included a
roast of caribou as he was somewhat indisposed. Miss Mitchell, Mrs. Mackenzie’s
niece, assisted in entertaining us and we were well looked after.88
88
Samuel Stewart. Treaty 9 Journal 1905. LAC-BAC, RG10 Vol 11399.
98
Like Scott in “The Last of the Indian Treaties”, Stewart believed that the Indians were
impressed, even fearful, of the presence of the two Canadian policemen. A photograph
taken from a high vantage point on shore shows the Treaty flotilla crossing a lake, canoes
aligned side-by-side and with flag raised. This panorama was afforded the feasting
Indians of Lac Seul who looked out as the Commission approached and landed on shore.
Police officer Joseph L. Vanasse recreated the scene in his account,
This being the third day of the White Dog Feast, as practiced by the Ojibway
Indians at Lac Seul, it was consequently the most interesting. As we approached
we could hear easily in the distance the beating of the drums at the camp. We had
been seen coming, for the natives were all standing on the brow of the hill, lining
the shore. They were quite amazed by our presence among them, as they did not
expect that we would go to them. In order to impress them all the more, I picked
up the Union Jack which was waving over our canoe and carried it up the hill, to
the camp, marching in the footsteps of the Commissioners.89
Returning to Stewart’s account above, it is clear that the Indians were not the only
impressed parties. It is intriguing that Stewart used the upper case every time he wrote the
word “Conjuror”. He states that the Commissioners “could not but be surprised at the
wisdom” Nistonaqueb displayed. Clearly, the Commissioners encountered a selfpossessed, confidant man who was nothing like the projections of childish Natives in the
pre-conceived ideas of Scott and his cohorts. Nistonaqueb and “Pow-wassing the head
Conjuror” were clearly different from the grateful, proto-Christian Charles Wabinoo.
These medicine men had perhaps more in common with the fictional Akoose than the
“Indians in transition” along the Albany River that summer. Finally, in Stewart’s account,
we learn that Scot, who had “demanded to see the Conjuror” fell ill after returning to the
Lac Seul trading post and did not join in the entertainment provided by the trader’s
family that night, “We were sorry that Mr. Scott was not able to partake of the good
89
Vanasse. “The White Dog Feast”, 62.
99
things provided which included a roast of caribou as he was somewhat indisposed.”
Scott’s absence may hint that he was having a disturbing reaction to the powerful and
confident Indigenous man he encountered earlier in the day.
The final account of July 6 is Scott’s, a hand-written journal kept during the
Treaty expedition. The entries were written in truncated phrases, really nothing more than
a series of bullet points. Scott was familiar with point form written communication as he
often carried on important Departmental business by telegram. In his Treaty voyage
journals, Scott appears to have been keeping a sparse factual record to aid in the writing
of the official report back in Ottawa. Clearly, he spent more time on the Treaty trips
writing poetry, as the rapid publication of Via Borealis in autumn 1906 and the admiring
accounts of the academic Pelham Edgar who accompanied the Commission in 1906
would attest.90 Scott’s journal scribbled in the bush and water-damaged in places, makes
for laborious, sometimes, inconclusive reading.91 At the best of times, Scott’s
handwriting in his personal papers, unlike the densely stroked entries he made as a clerk
and accountant with the Department, is murky – in places his Treaty journals are simply
indecipherable. Fortunately, the entry for July 6, 1905 survives, and is clear enough to be
read,
Broke camp at 6:45. Up at 5 bath in lake. Lovely morning. Reached Lac Seul Post
at Very few Ind. Had breakfast with the Mackenzies in charge of the Post.
Lunched whitefish. Learned that the Inds were having a dance and making
medicine on the Res. About 7 miles away. Went down in canoe. Mac-rae and his
party. Long argument with old medicine man – cunning old gent with a swollen
jaw. Powassan the head medicine man had sent them word to [indecipherable] the
medicine. Conference with Mackenzie about this. Warned Ind. Not to dance. He
promised to do what he could to stop it. But we must speak to Powassan.
Returned about 4 taken ill92
Pelham Edgar. “Travelling With A Poet” chap. 5 in Along My Path (Toronto: Ryerson, 1952), 60.
Duncan Campbell Scott. Treaty 9 Journal. LAC RG-10 Vol 11399.
92
Ibid. July 6, 1905.
90
91
100
Such is Scott’s only account of a formative moment in his life, one that years later would
resurface in his poem Powassan’s Drum. Scott’s encounter with “the old medicine man –
cunning old gent with a swollen jaw” clearly made a strong impression. Although the
local trader and de-facto Indian Department agent Mackenzie “promised to do what he
could do to stop it”, Duncan Campbell Scott decidedly did not win the day with
Nistonaqueb. Scott left the encounter puzzled and troubled by the “old gent” and by the
apparent eminence of his master Powassan. Scott is alone in describing Nistonaqueb in
grotesque terms, specifying his “swollen jaw”. By day’s end, Scott was taken ill. The
question arises, was he cursed by Nistonaqueb? Certainly, ethnological evidence of
curses in Anishinabe culture abounds.93 One can only speculate as to what truly occurred
as a result of the argument with Nistonaqueb that day. What is certain is what remains Powassan’s Drum, a foundational work of Canadian literature.
Powassan’s Drum is a long nightmarish poem. Selected stanzas follow that
illustrate Scott’s bewilderment and apprehension over what he witnessed in July 1905.
The poem was completed in 1922 and published in 1926. In April, 1925 it was read by
playwright and producer Bertram Forsyth at Victoria College Chapel at the University of
Toronto. In addition to Forsyth’s performance, Scott read his own poetry at the Victoria
College event94 The first lines of Powassan’s Drum, “Throb-throb-throb-throb/Is this
throbbing a sound?/Or an ache in the air?”, evoke the only mention that Scott made of
Indian drumming in “The Last of The Indian Treaties”,
93
Brown and Brightman (eds.), Orders of the Dreamed, 64-66.
“Bard of The Northland Stirs Hearers With Poems,” The Globe, April 23, 1925, City News Section.
“Mr. Scott further impressed his audience with the wealth of literary material available from the Indian
whose Deputy Superintendent General he is in the Civil Service at Ottawa;”; Bentley “Shadows in the
Soul”, 760; Dragland. Floating Voice, 89, 161.
94
101
In our journey we had been borne by the waters of the Albany through a country
where essential solitude prevails. Occasionally the sound of a conjurer’s drum far
away pervaded the day like an aërial pulse;… 95
The suggestion that “solitude prevails” betrays a widely shared misapprehension of the
Canadian north as profound as the miscomprehension of Native spirituality in the poem
Powassan’s Drum itself. To the Anishinabe, their homelands were not a solitary place.
Humans, animals, plants, the winds, stars, sun and moon made the territory a homeland
for the people who lived along the Albany.96 Scott, even though he was already
acquainted with the north and travel in the Canadian bush, was freighted along the
Albany with reductive perceptions of what civil society and civilization might contain.
By 1922, Scott had processed his unpleasant brush with shamanism on the Treaty
Commission into poetry. His recollection transmuted Nistonaqueb, the “cunning old gent
with a swollen jaw” into a nightmarish, satanic figure,
He crouches in his dwarf wigwam
Wizened with fasting,
Fierce with thirst,
Making great medicine
In memory of hated things dead
Or in menace of hated things to come,
And the universe listens
To the throb — throb — throb — throb —
Throbbing of Powassan’s Drum.
Is it a memory of hated things dead
That he beats — famished —
Or a menace of hated things to come
That he beats — parched with anger
Scott “Last of The Indian Treaties”, p.90
This distinction of world view between the people who live in the north and are dependent upon its
primary resources and the southern gaze of travelers, recent settlers and resource developers is featured in
the following: Thomas R. Berger in Northern Frontier Northern Homeland: Report of the Mackenzie
Valley Pipeline Inquiry Report (Ottawa: Government of Canada, 1977); Hugh Brody in Maps and Dreams
(Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 1984); Wayland Drew, introduction to Bruce M. Litteljohn, and
Wayland Drew, Superior, the Haunted Shore (Toronto: Gage Publishing, 1975) Boyce Richardson, People
of Terra Nullius : Betrayal and Rebirth in Aboriginal Canada (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 1993);
Boyce Richardson, Strangers Devour the Land (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 1991; 1975)
95
96
102
And famished with hatred —?97
Scott interprets the drum as a signal of hatred. In Anishinabe culture, drumming is
frequently associated with healing and the benevolence of the world’s creator.98 As the
poem gathers in intensity, frequent allusions to the sounds of wind, water and thundering
skies are added to the steady throbbing of Powassan’s drum - sound is prevalent in the
work of Scott who was an accomplished musician.99 As a raging storm gathers strength
Scott introduces a nightmare of aboriginal potency,
Then from the reeds stealing,
A shadow noiseless,
A canoe moves noiseless as sleep,
Noiseless as the trance of deep sleep
And an Indian still as a statue
Molded out of deep sleep,
Headless, still as a headless statue
Molded out of deep sleep, Sits
modelled in full power, Haughty
in manful power, Headless and
impotent in power. The canoe
stealthy as death
Drifts to the throbbing of Powassan’s Drum.
The Indian fixed like bronze
Trails his severed head
Through the dead water
Holding it by the hair,
By the plaits of hair,
Wound with sweet grass and tags of silver.
The face looks through the water
Up to its throne on the shoulders of power,
Unquenched eyes burning in the water,
Piercing beyond the shoulders of power
Up to the fingers of the storm could.
97
Scott in Clever, ed., 83-86
Dragland, Floating Voice, 166-171; Mathews and Roulette, “Fair Wind’s Dream,” in Brown and Vibert
eds., Beyond Words, 131.
99
Leonard W. Brockington, “Duncan Campbell Scott’s 8oth Birthday,” Saturday Night, Vol. 57, No. 47,
Toronto, August 1, 1942, 25; Madge Macbeth, “Duncan Campbell Scott: A Few of My Memories” The
Canadian Author and Bookman (Ottawa: Volume 38, No. 1 Summer, 1962), 2; Sandra Gwyn, The Private
Capital: Ambition and Love in the Age of Macdonald and Laurier (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart,
1984), 455-7.
98
103
Is this the meaning of the magic —
The translation into sight
Of the viewless hate?
Is this what the world waited for
As is listened to the throb — throb — throb — throb —
Throbbing of Powassan’s Drum?
The sun could not answer
The tense sky burst and went dark
And could not answer.
But the storm answers.
The murdered shadow sinks in the water
Uprises the storm
And crushes the dark world; At
the core of the rising fury
Bursting hail, tangled lightning
Wind in the wild vortex
Lives the triumphant throb-throb-throb-throb-throbThrobbing of Powassan’s Drum.
The terror expressed in Powassan’s Drum harkens perhaps to Scott’s subjective feeling as
he skulked away ill from his confrontation with Nisconequeb on July 6, 1905. On that
day, Scott encountered something imponderably non-Christian, something utterly at odds
and resistant to the ideology that he was expected to advance as a representative of the
Canadian government. The episode fixed the adversary in Scott’s mind. Perhaps he
reached the frustrating understanding, intellectually and viscerally, that the Aboriginal
world contained forces beyond his control. That realization fuelled both his art and his
determination to further policies aimed at creating a Canadian identity more palatable to
his own understanding and beliefs about liberal progress and modernity. Memories of
Niconequeb perhaps steeled him for the hardening of Indian policies of which he would
become a principal advocate as he climbed up the ladder at the Indian Department.100
Scott’s revulsion is perhaps somewhat of a contradiction. Scott, particularly late
in life, was familiar with and practiced various aspects of theosophy and divination that
100
Titley, Narrow Vision, 67; Bentley, “Shadows in the Soul,” 760-64.
104
were prevalent in Ottawa of the 1920s and 1930s. Scott’s second wife, the poet Elise
Aylen, was a noted theosophist and spiritual seeker who left Canada permanently after
Scott’s death in 1947 to live out her days in an ashram in India.101 On one occasion, as
Scott courted the young Aylen in the latter part of his career at the Indian Department, he
wrote of his frustrations in attempting to get to the ‘other side’ from a Halifax hotel room
where he was on Departmental business, “I tried divination this morning with the
Gideons Bible but did not get much out of it.”102
Ceux d’en Bas
Scott’s unwillingness to abide aspects of Anishinabe spirituality along the Albany
River reflects the ideological predisposition of a post-Victorian representative of the
Canadian state. Jacques Soustelle, however, displayed as a young ethnologist a keen
fascination in the spiritual ways of Mexican Indigenous peoples. In the remote villages in
the states of Hidalgo, Mexico, San Luis Potosí and Oaxaca Soustelle carefully observed
festivals and religious rites and wrote extensively in both his popular works and his
academic papers about vestiges of ancient spiritual ways.103
101
Gwyn, Private Capital, 466-70.
Duncan Campbell Scott letter to Elise Aylen September 8, 1929. Lord Nelson Hotel Halifax LMS-0204
Elise Aylen- DC Scott fonds LAC-BAC, OttawaBox 1 Folder 4 “Personal correspondence DC Scott 1929”
103
Soustelle terre indienne, 46-7, 52, 66-7, 199; Soustelle, « La famille otomi-pame du Mexique central »
(Paris: Institut d'ethnologie 1937); Soustelle, Quatre soleils. 63, 80-2, 97, 103-6, 172-3, 188.
102
105
Figure 16 Otomí festival 1934 photo J. Soustelle (courtesy MqB)
Between 1932 and 1934, Jacques and Georgette Soustelle often lived among Mexican
Indians. In his Mexique terre indienne he entitled a chapter “Ceux d’en bas” (literally
“those from below”, best translated to English as the “underdogs”) which denounced the
racism that Mexican Indians faced particularly in rural areas. Soustelle borrowed his
chapter’s title from the eponymous novel by Mariano Azuela, a frank depiction of the
suffering of ordinary people during the revolution. Soustelle greatly admired Azuela’s
work.104
104
Soustelle, terre indienne, 149 ; Mariano Azuela, Los De Abajo y Mala Yerba (México, D.F.: Fondo de
Cultura Económica, 2004) Originally published 1915.
106
…les notabilités,…, n’ont pas assez de mots pour exprimer leur intime sentiment
de supériorité sur les “Inditos” assez bêtes pour tomber dans les panneaux qu’on
leur tend. J’ai rarement vu poussée à un haut degrès que chez ces gens la morgue
de la gente de razón” selon le titre que se donnent à eux-mêmes les créoles et les
métis par opposition aux indigènes. Chez les propriétaires de la maison où nos
quartiers étaient installés, notamment, cette morgue insupportable me repugnait;
ce n’étaient, en s’adressant aux Indiens, que cris violents: Andale!: vas-y! Cours!
Comme si tout indigène était un domestique né. sic105
The Soustelles travelled widely through central Mexico and had a memorable journey to
the Lacandon rain forest of Chiapas in 1934. For months at a time, the Soustelles lived in
small villages or in the forest in homes and camps of Otomí, Mazahua or Lacandon
Mayan people. Jacques Soustelle became sufficiently conversant in both Otomí and the
Mayan dialect of the Lacandons to pursue research in the local languages.106 Throughout
the period Soustelle exhibited a fascination with religion and spiritual rites. In both his
journalism and ethnological works that followed, Soustelle generally exhibited an open
mindedness and lack of moral judgment about the practices he observed.
The Lacandons numbered less than 400 in 1934. Most of them did not speak
Spanish. None among the group that the Soustelles encountered had converted to
Christianity. They lived without electricity, running water or internal combustible
engines, in family groups numbering between 20 and 50 people, cultivated small plots
that they hacked out from under the rain forest canopy and hunted animals. In the 1930s
social scientists had barely begun investigating them.107 As a doctoral student, Soustelle
was aware of American anthropologist Alfred M. Tozzer’s 1904 doctoral thesis from
105
Soustelle, terre indienne, 29.
Ibid, 71, 227.
107
Soustelle, quatre soleils. 45-66. The American anthropologist Afred M. Tozzer, Danish archeologist
Franz Blom and his wife the Swiss photographer Gertrude Darby were among those whose work among the
Lacandons influenced Soustelle. As a doctoral student, Soustelle was aware of Tozzer’s doctoral thesis:
Alfred M. Tozzer, “A Comparative Study of the Maya and the Lacandones,” PhD dissertation, Harvard
University, 1904.
106
107
Harvard University; Soustelle was also familiar with the disparate works of the German
explorer and photographer Teoberto Maler and of the French photographer Désiré Charnay
who travelled through Mayan territory, including the Lacandon forest, in the late
19th century.108 As a requirement for his doctorate, Soustelle needed to conduct a
secondary investigation to his primary work in central Mexico among the Otomi. His
sense of adventure and ethnological enterprise was piqued by the Lacandon Mayan. In
fact, he first accompanied some American and German amateur explorers to the region in
1933 in an ill-advised misadventure led by a German pilot from Mexico City.109
108
Christine Barthe (sous la direction de) le Yucatán est ailleurs Expéditions photographiques Désiré
Charnay (1857-1886) (Paris: Musée du quai Branly, Actes Sud, 2007); Alfred M. Tozzer, “A Comparative
Study of the Maya and the Lacandones,” PhD dissertation, Harvard University, 1904; Social Origins and
Social Continuities (New York: The Macmillan company, 1925); Ignacio Gutiérrez Ruvalcaba, Teoberto
Maler: Historia De Un Fotógrafo Vuelto Arqueólogo (México, D.F.: Instituto Nacional de Antropolgía e
Historia, 2008).
109
Soustelle, terre indienne, 155-160.
108
Figure 17 Lacandon family c1934 photo J. Soustelle (courtesy MqB)
Although that group did make contact with the Lacandon Mayan, Soustelle was
embarrassed when its members falsely reported to the Mexican and French press they had
discovered abandoned treasure in the rain forest. Soustelle enlisted Paul Rivet in Paris to
clear his name of the sensational story.110 He was determined to return to the Lacandon
rain forest with a more scientific approach and in January 1934, Soustelle lived for four
months among the Lacandons. In occasional letters to his supervisor, Soustelle kept Rivet
abreast of his itinerary,
110
Ibid.
109
- d’abord, avec l’avion, nous avons survolé le fleuve Jatalé et les régions voisines
pour aller atterrir au lieu dit San-Quentín, où nous avons fait préparer un champ
d’atterrissage ; de là nous avons rejoint à pied l’unique « Caribel » de la région,
qui est habité par 5 familles de Lacondons… avec qui nous sommes très bien
entendus – Ils nous ont servi de guides et d’informateurs jusqu’à notre retour à El
Real, l’hacienda qui nous servait de base.111
It was there Soustelle met the redoubtable hunter and shaman T’chankin.
Figure 18 J. Soustelle & T'chankin c. 1934 (courtesy MqB). Photo by Georgette
Soustelle.
111
MNHN fonds Rivet 2 APIC Sous. Jacques Soustelle, letter to Paul Rivet. Mexico, March 20, 1934.
110
With T’chankin as their interlocutor the Soustelles treked from their base camp
among the Lacandon Mayan to Metsaboc Lake, a spiritual site for the Lacandon Maya,
located in the heart of the Lacandon rain forest an area in southern Chiapas just north of
Guatemala and west of the Yucatan peninsula. There they were shown a number of caves
and petroglyphs that Soustelle argued linked these people to the people who lived in the
same region before the Spanish Conquest.112 This was extremely significant to Soustelle
because it exemplified, for him, the point of Rivet’s teachings: traces of ancient
Indigenous ways persist among their living descendants.
Soustelle, like Tozzer before him, pondered the link between these rain forest
people and the great civilisations that had built magnificent temples and monuments at
nearby Yaxichilan, Bonampak and Palenque. The Lacandons’ reverence for the vestiges
of those great civilizations and the evident link of language convinced Soustelle and
ethnologists since that these people were descendants of the Mayan classic period.
Conversely, the Mexican revolutionary state government was busy unearthing and
curating official archaeological sites where Mexico’s glorious imperial civilizations could
be set apart from modern Mexican society, but held up as shining remnants like ancient
Greece and Rome.113
Soustelle considered T’chankin a wise man and, as he did in the Otomi-PameMazahua villages in central Mexico, Soustelle absorbed as much as he could of Lacandon
112
MNHN Soustelle letter of March 20, 1934 to Rivet.
Néstor García Canclini, Culturas Híbridas: Estrategias Para Entrar y Salir De La Modernidad (Buenos
Aires: Paidós, 2001), 165-77; Quetzil E. Castañeda, In the Museum of Maya Culture:Touring Chichén Itzá.
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 5, 117-21; Alex Saragoza, “The Selling of Mexico:
Tourism and the State, 1929-1952,” in Gilbert Joseph, Anne Rubenstein, & Eric Zolov, Fragments of a
Golden Age – The Politics of Culture in Mexico Since 1940 Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001),
91-115.
113
111
religious practices. He was invited by T’chankin to obseerve an invocation which
required the careful building of a special structure and the laborious preparation of an
intoxicating beverage made from forest plants. Soustelle was a careful observer of such
practices. As in Central Mexico, the piety and strength of faith of the Lacandons
impressed him,
Au total, la religion, dans la vie quotidienne d’un Lacandon, pèse lourdement… Or
il bâtit encore un temple, souvent plus spacieux et mieux agencé que sa propre
case, avec sa table - autel ou ses étagères ; il façonne avec soin ses encensoirs,
modèle les figurines qui représentent les dieux, utilise le roucou, le noir de fumée
la craie pour les décorer ; il va récolter dans la forêt la gomme aromatique du copal
et les baies odorantes ; il bat l’ dans la foret corce dont on fait les bandeaux rituels,
creuse un tronc d’arbre pour la fabrication du baltché, érige un abri sous le quel on
prépare le k’ayem, entreprend de longs et fatigants pélerinages à Yaxchilán : bref,
lui qui a déjà tant de mal pour se procurer ce qui lui est indispensable, pour luimême et pour le siens, s’astreint en outre à un travail presque équivalent pour les
services de ses dieux.114
Among the Lacandon Mayan, Soustelle began to ruminate about questions that
would concern him for the rest of his career. He became deeply aware of the role of
religion in people’s lives across cultures. The fate of the Lacandon – their link to the great
ancient Mayan civilizations - gave rise to a life-long concern in Soustelle about the
destinies of civilizations. In contemplating such matters in his writings, his point of
reference was the demise of classic Mayan civilization and the rise and fall of the Aztecs
who had tamed most of Mexico in a few centuries, but fell to the Spanish in the course of
two years. His highly regarded Les quatre soleils of 1967, a mature work which
complements his first, Mexique terre indienne, uses the ancient Mexican account of a
succession of worlds that end in destruction as his leitmotif of human progress and decay.
Soustelle believed this way of looking at human history and the cosmos was imbued in
the daily lives of the Lacandons. He experienced this way of looking at the world himself
114
Soustelle, Quatre soleils, 83.
112
one day as he and his companions paused to eat during a long day’s journey through the
rainforest,
Pour manger, ils s’accroupissaient sur le sol, tiraient de leurs filets de portages des
calebasses graves où ils mélangeaient avec l’eau le mais qu’ils avaient pris
comme provision. Avant de porter la nourriture à leur bouche, ils plongaient le
bout des doigts dans la bouillie, et en jetaient des gouttes aux quatre points
cardinaux en psaodiant une courte formule sur des tons montants et descendants.
- Si nous faisions pas cela, il y aurait des orages, et puis des tigres
viendraient, et nous dévoreraient, disait Tchambor.115
Soustelle emphasized that civilizations could and would terminate. By the 1960s he came
to consider France’s abandonment of Algeria as the sign of a French civilization in decay.
Questions about the primacy of religion, the fate of civilizations and the observation of
politics were among the preoccupations that the young Jacques Soustelle took from
Mexico in 1932-1934.
Soustelle was both an advocate and a fierce critic of the Mexican revolution. With
the archaeologist and educator Manuel Gamio and other indigenistas as his guides,
Soustelle visited several rural schools where Indians were expected to benefit from the
revolution’s social progress. In a letter to Paul Rivet, Soustelle mentioned the first such
visit,
Beaucoup de choses se sont passé depuis la dernière fois que je vous ai écrit, et en
somme cette période pourrait se résumer sous le titre de « chasse aux Otomis » La première expédition a été à Actopan, où nous sommes allés avec Gamio. Nous
avons logé dans l’École normale rurale, très bien accueillis naturellement. 116
115
Soustelle, terre indienne,199.
MNHN fonds Rivet 2 APIC Sous. Jacques Soustelle letter to Paul Rivet. Mexico, November 30, 1932.
For a discussion of Gamio’s multi-faceted role as anthropologist, activist and government employee, see
Claudio Lomnitz, “Bordering on Anthropology: Dialectics of a National Tradition,” in Deep Mexico, Silent
Mexico: An Anthropology of Nationalism (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2001),
250-4.
116
113
In Canada as Deputy Superintendant General of Indian Affairs, Duncan Campbell Scott
led an effort of “aggressive civilization” in which policies of compulsory education, often
in residential schools, and enforced assimilation through a variety of means was designed
to terminate Indian identity.117 Jacques Soustelle came to Mexico as the Mexican
revolution’s very different approach to Indian redemption and integration was shifting.118
The Secretaría de Educación Pública (SEP) had begun to dedicate itself to the
establishment of local-run rural schools and cultural missions throughout Mexico. The
intent was still assimilation, an effort to eventually forge a Mestizo raza cósmica as the
social bedrock of a unified Mexican nation.119 In sum, indigenismo aspired to enlist
Mexican Indians in the project of institutionalized social revolution. On the whole, it was
a government initiative with which Soustelle found favour and one that he thought
courageously challenged the past predations against Indian people by the Catholic
Church and the long dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz (1876-1880 and 1884-1911) that
preceded the revolution,
Enfin ceux des Indiens qui sont déjà en marche, par l’agrarisme et par la diffusion de
l’éducation, vers une autre destine que celles de leurs pères, de leurs aïeux et de cent
générations dont l’incessant labeur est resté cache derrière le brillant décor du
Mexique colonial, républicain et porfiriste. J’ai déjà rendu hommage plusieurs fois,
dans ce souvenirs, aux maîtres ruraux. Je les tiens pour le vrai ferment du Mexique
d’aujourd’hui eux dont la peine et quelquefois le sang fondent peu à peu un people
nouveau avec sept millions de paysans à peau brune opprimés et méprisés. Qu’on
feuillette les rapports des missions culturelles et des écoles rurales publiées par le
Secrétariat de l’Éducation; on y verra les marches épuisantes à travers les montagnes,
l’hostilité des caciques et des prêtres, les rebuffades et les mauvais traitements. Dans
un village du Querétaro, l’instituteur se voit boycotté par les pauvres ignorants; à force
d’insistance, il finit par en connaître la cause:
117
Titley, Narrow Vision, 76-7.
Alexander S Dawson, Indian and Nation in Revolutionary Mexico. Tucson: University of Arizona
Press, 2004; Alexander S Dawson, "From Models for the Nation to Model Citizens." Journal of Latin
American Studies 17, no. 2 (1998): 375-402.
119
Vasconcelos and Jaén, The Cosmic Race.
118
114
-
Le cure nous a dit que vous veniez élever nos enfants dans la religion
protestante et qu’ils iraient tous en enfer.120
In 1936, with the publication of his first book, it was already clear that Soustelle felt the
initiative was an essential plank for social justice in Mexico.
In his first book he registered some concern about the cultural flattening that the
indigenismo project could entail. His Mexico, it would appear, needed to display its
Indigenous characteristics with pride,
Dans l’accomplissaient de leur tâche, pourtant, ne risquent-ils pas de dépasser le
but, en poussant les Indiens à abandonner leurs particularités ethniques ou plutôt
nationales pour se fonder dans la masse indistincte des métis?121
It was, however, in the political realm that ethnology student Jacques Soustelle
would register his harshest critique of the Mexican revolution under the pseudonym Jean
Duriez.
Figure 19 MASSES 193 (courtesy BNF Mitterand)
120
121
Soustelle, terre indienne, 150.
Ibid, 151.
115
Perhaps it was because he was a rising scholar in receipt of French scholarships from the
French government who did not want his real name associated with left-wing journals
such as MASSES and Spartacus; perhaps as a guest of the Mexican government he was
worried that “Jacques Soustelle” might wear his welcome out in Mexico if its embassy in
Paris took note of his dispatches. In neither his incomplete memoirs, nor in a long
interview with an oral historian published after his death did Soustelle speak to the
mystery.122
In these articles Soustelle displayed the contrarian streak which earned him the
sobriquet, or nickname, le Mal aimé, the French equivalent of ‘the black sheep’, from his
biographer Bernard Ullmann.123 He called Diego Rivera “un farceur pseudo
révolutionnaire”.124 Some analysts suggest that Soustelle developed an overly positive
outlook on the post-revolutionary Mexico he observed as a young man.125 However, a
review of his journalism from Mexico reveals tendencies that haunt, or distinguish, his
political career after the war. His loyalty lay not with the official revolutionary party, then
led by Plutarco Elías Calles, but with the peasants. He made common cause with the
subjects of his ethnological research, the agrarian Indians of Central Mexico and the
oppressed of Chiapas.126 He attacked the Catholic Church in a long series of articles
about religion in Mexico.127 He also was extremely dubious about the socialist
qualifications of the incoming president Cárdenas,
122
Soustelle, Souvenirs, 27-45.
Ullmann, Le Mal aimé, 9-10.
124
Jean Duriez (Jacques Soustelle), “La lutte contre la guerre et le fascisme au Mexique,” (Paris, Spartacus
Décembre 14, 1934), 3.
125
Stephen Tyre, "From Algérie Française to France Musulmane: Jacques Soustelle and the Myths and
Realities of ‘Integration’, 1955–1962." French History 20, no. 3 (09, 2006), 277-86.
126
Soustelle, terre indienne, 125-153.
127
Duriez (Soustelle), “La question religieuse au Mexique,” (Paris, MASSES, editions of September,
October, November and December 1933).
123
116
Mais plus dangereux encore que le fascisme bruyant à chemises de couleur et à
saluts romains, est le fascisme larvé, le fascisme méconnu qui se présente sous le
nom même du socialisme : telle est justement la tendance du gouvernement actuel
du Mexique. A la suite des dernières élections, en effet, général Cárdenas, doit
entrer en décembre à la Présidence, et consacrer sa période de gouvernement à la
réalisation du Plan de Six Ans.
Comme l’écrit Salazar Mallén, fasciste notoire et grand admirateur de Mussolini,
la caractéristique du fascisme est justement de planifier l’économie tout en
conservant le régime d’exploitation capitaliste. Le Plan comporte surtout une
offensive raisonné contre les organisations ouvrières : tous les syndicats
« minoritaires » c’est-à-dire révolutionnaires devront disparaître au profit des
syndicats unique contrôlés par les leaders corrompus à la solde du Parti officiel.
S’ajoutant aux mesures déjà existantes (Tribunaux du travail, etc…), cette
unification des syndicats tiendra la classe ouvrière mexicaine prisonnière d’un
système corporatif destiné à perpétuer la collaborations des classes., c’est-à-dire
l’exploitation d’une classe par l’autre. C’est ce qu’on appelle, dans les discours
officiels le « socialisme mexicain ».128
Soustelle was convinced that the revolutionary elite of Mexico City, along with its bevy
of international leftist and bohemian artistic followers, did not truly understand rural
Mexico. Soustelle admired the courage and tenacity of rural teachers who worked
directly with villagers, but he had little faith in the grandiose plans of the official
Mexican revolutionary party in power,
Ce que veulent, ce qu’ont toujours voulu les éducateurs révolutionnaires
mexicains, c’est suivre le sens de l’évolution qui depuis les temps de la Conquête
et surtout de l’Indépendance, brasse les races et fait que le nombre des métis tende
à en former la base humaine du pays. Ils veulent créer une culture métis, où les
éléments indigènes tiendront leur place et seront revêtus d’une éminente dignité,
mais sans refouler les éléments européens. C’est quelque chose d’infiniment plus
délicat et plus difficile que d’exalter systématiquement tout ce qui est Indien ou
que l’on croit tel; …
La réalité n’est pas si belle. La réforme agraire est privée de toute signification
socialiste par le fractionnement des terres communales, qui est en train de créer au
Mexique une petite propriété individuelle aussi arriérée et aussi lourde pour le
progrès social qui constitue la base des certains pays d’Europe.129
Duriez (Soustelle) “La lutte contre la guerre et le fascisme au Mexique” (Paris: Spartacus, Décembre 14,
1934), 3.
129
Jean Duriez (Jacques Soustelle) « Comment “ils” voient le Mexique,» MASSES, Juillet 1934,12.
128
117
In the 1930s, Soustelle evinced a scepticism of left leaning intellectual elites that would
resurface in his lone wolf approach to the Algerian question. In the 1950s, he insisted that
the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN), the leading Algerian revolutionary party, did
not represent a majority of rural Algerians. As we shall see, Soustelle would famously
claim that he understood the plight of the fellaghs, the Algerian peasants, in a way that
FLN intellectuals and his boulevardiste opponents on the Parisian left of the 1950s did
not.130 Soustelle believed that the FLN and its supporters were removed from everyday
Algerian reality just as he believed the advisors surrounding Lázaro Cárdenas could not
reconcile their indigenista policies with the bitter realities of Mexican rural existence.131
The Mexican education of the twenty-something Jacques Soustelle is summed up
in a letter to his mentor Paul Rivet written after he and his wife had completed the first
phase of their research in Central Mexico. The letter begins with Soustelle’s scientific
interests. He speaks of the pottery that he collected at archeological sites; expresses mild
annoyance that some of his would-be subjects have become Mestizos; but confidently
proclaims that he has found “survivants” in Otomi, Pame or Mazahua villages scattered
through the mountains.132
What is most intriguing about the letter is how Soustelle shifts to political
concerns. He mentions the change of power in Mexico and the ongoing violence of the
Cristero revolt in parts of Mexico. The Cristeros were right-wing Catholics sometimes
with fascist tendancies that opposed the revolution and wished to restore the Catholic
130
Jacques Soustelle, Le drame algérien et la décadence française Réponse a Raymond Aron (Paris : Plon –
Tribune Libre 6, 1957), 2.
131
Duriez (Jacques Soustelle), 1934, 12.
132
MNHN fonds Rivet 2 APIC Jacques Soustelle from San Angel, Mexico to Paul Rivet, December 8,
1933. This folder of correspondence between Rivet and Soustelle contains many letters written by Soustelle
to Rivet from Mexico between 1932 and 1940. Some touch upon Soustelle’s doctoral research; some about
his military service prior to June 1940; and some offer political commentary on the Cardenás and Camacho
presidencies.
118
church’s primacy in Mexican life. The Cristeros were reacting to the harsh anti-clericism
of the revolution in some areas, particularly Sonora in northern Mexico. In an article on
the anti-fascist movement in Mexico, Soustelle made specific mention of the atrocities,
including mutilation and rape, committed by the Cristero side.133 Continuing in a political
vein, the letter begs Rivet for information on the political scene in France where leftist
supporters of the Popular Front were struggling with the right and worried about the rise of
fascism is Spain, Italy and Germany. The letter is re-produced here in its entirety,
San Angel, 8 Décembre 1935
Cher Docteur,
Nous venons de rentrer de la première partie de notre enquête et comme il
m’a été impossible jusqu’ici de vous donner de nouvelles, faute de poste, je profite
tout de suite de l’occasion. Nous sommes tous deux en bonne santé, quoique ce
mois et quelques jours de randonnée soit parmi les choses les plus dures que nous
avons jamais faites, étant donné que dans la traversée de la Sierra fonds on ne
trouve presque rien à manger ni à boire, le pauvreté des gens est pire que tout de
ce qu’on eut croire et des étendus très vastes sont dépeuplées. Par contre ce pays
est d’une grande beauté, avec des contrastes violents entre les
sommets, le climat froid, et le fond des ravins où re( ?) le véritable climat tropical.
Le début de notre travail a été plutôt archéologique, avec la visite des ruines de
Tolufuilla et Ranas, d’où nous rapportons de la poterie et divers objets. Ensuite,
surtout ethnographique et linguistique. La plupart des anciennes missions
Chichimèques sont aujourd’hui à demi dépeuplés et métissées. Toutefois on trouve,
avec les maillons éloignés et séparés par les montagnes, une chaîne de survivants
jusque dans San Luis Potosí.
Vous savez peut-être qu’en ce moment le pays n’est pas très tranquille. Le
général Calles a dû se retirer aux Etats-Unis, remplacé par Cárdenas, autour duquel
s’est formé une sorte de front commun groupant le Parti National Révolutionnaire,
les syndicats et les communistes. Mais, surtout ces derniers temps, une attaque très
vive s’est déclenchée contre les communistes, tendant à
les mettre au ban des activités officielles. Il ya environ 10 jours, sur le Zócalo de
México, au moment des manifestations ouvrières en honneur de l’anniversaire de
la Révolution, les fascistes « Chemises Dorées » ont chargé à cheval la foule ; des
centaines de coups de feu ont étés tirés, il y a plusieurs morts et des quantités de
blessés. De leur côte, les catholiques font preuve d’une activité très inquiétante.
Ces sont soulevés en armes dans Jalisco et Sonora, et dans plusieurs régions
d’Aguascalientes, Puebla, Morelos, Michoacán. Ils se consacrent principalement à
brûler les écoles, tuant les maîtres ou les mutilant. Il est arrivé récemment à
133
Duriez (Soustelle), « Comment “ils” voient le Mexique, » 12.
119
Mexico deux institutrices à qui les bandits « cristeros » avaient coupé les oreilles,
après les avoir violés. Si vous en avez l’occasion, apprenez ses exploits à Ricard.
Excuser tout le bavardage, mais je sais que vous intéressez à ce pays.
Quant au nôtre, ce qu’on en apprend ici revient à rien. Impossible de se faire la
moindre idée sur la politique extérieure. Que signifie la permanence de Laval au
gouvernement ? Que devient le Front Populaire ? Dans l’ignorance de ce qui se
passe, je me contente de vous envoyer à vous personnellement et à vos
compagnons de lutte l’assurance que nous pensons à vous et à ce que vous faites,
en attendant de revenir aider comme nous le pourrons.134
On his return to France in 1934, Soustelle quickly finished his thesis and published
Mexique terre indienne.135 Rivet immediately enlisted him in the creation of Le Musée de
l’Homme in Paris and named Soustelle, at the age of twenty-five, assistant director.136
However, from a promising career at the highest reaches of French social science as the
designated successor to Rivet as director of Le Musée, Soustelle’s life and career was
changed irrevocably by the Second World War. As a resistance leader, Gaullist politician
and controversial advocate of l’Algérie française, Soustelle would swerve dramatically
from an exclusively academic career. However, Mexico would remain a fundamental
source of his intellectualism as both a social scientist and political activist.
Conculsion
The Treaty 9 Commission of 1905-6 was a step up the ladder for the promising
Indian Department bureaucrat Duncan Campbell Scott. He demonstrated to his superiors
in Ottawa that he was capable of senior responsibilities. He, along with Samuel Stewart,
was able to bring the Indians under treaty in a geographically critical area with the
acquiescence of Ontario without major difficulty. Scott witnessed first-hand the ground
on which the Department’s civilization campaign would be waged. The Treaty 9
134
MNHN fonds Rivet 2 APIC Soustelle letter to Rivet, Dec 8, 1935.
Soustelle, terre indienne, 1936; Soustelle, La Famille Otomí-Pame Du Mexique Central, Université De
Paris. Travaux et mémoires De l'Institut d'Ethnologie. Vol. 26. (Paris: Institut d'ethnologie, 1937).
136
Nicole Racine, “SOUSTELLE, Jacques,” in Dictionnaire, 390-1.
135
120
Commission enhanced his understanding of the reserve system and the pattern of growth
in schools and Departmental management that would be required as settlement proceeded
west. In Scott’s mind, his Treaty 9 Commission experience re-affirmed the merit of the
designation as wards of the state accorded to Indian peoples under Canada’s Indian Act.
He emerged more convinced than ever that the civilization program must continue. In
future years, particularly after he became Deputy Superintendant General in 1913, he
actively pursued toughening the policy in areas such as mandatory school attendance, the
removal of Indian status, the suppression of Indian political organization, the outlawing
of land claims research and enforcing existing prohibitions on Indian spiritual activities
such as the potlatch and sun dance.137 As he wrote in “The Last of the Indian Treaties”
Scott the mandarin was convinced such steps were necessary step in “making an end” of
Indigenousness in Canada. Scott as bureaucrat was an inflexible defender of a system
rooted in the traditions of British colonialism. Scott resided uneasily between polarities of
brutal assimilation and humane accommodation that has afflicted Canadian policy
concerning Indigenous peoples since the creation of the Canadian state in 1867. Although
he seldom referred to his Indian Department career following his retirement in 1932, it is
clear that Scott viewed the Treaty 9 Commission as a watershed in his civil service
career. A year before his death, he re-published “The Last of The Indian Traties” his
1906 essay for Scribner’s Magazine in his final book.138
137
Brownlie, Robin, A Fatherly Eye: Indian Agents, Government Power and Aboriginal Resistance in
Ontario, 1918-1939 (Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press, 2003), 136-38; John S. Milloy, A National
Crime: The Canadian Government and the Residential School System, 1879-1986 (Winnipeg: University of
Manitoba Press, 1999, 70-1; Pettipas, Severing the Ties, 1994, 149-51; Titley, Narrow Vision, 75-93, 162183.
138
Duncan Campbell Scott. The Circle of Affection (Toronto:McClelland & Stewart, 1947), 109-22.
121
As an artist, the Treaty 9 Commission of 1905-6 was equally important to Scott.
The publication of Via Borealis immediately following the Commission enhanced Scott’s
stature as one of Canada’s premier poets. The Commission also provided a vein of
inspiration that Scott would mine for years. As we have seen, Powassan’s Drum emerged
in 1922 following the encounter on Lac Seul with Nistonaqueb in July 1905. Later
chapters explore other major poems including The Height of Land, published in 1916,
and short stories such as Expiation, published in 1923 that reveal additional aspects of
Scott’s world view that flowed from the experience of the Treaty Commission. Also,
Scott’s friendships with the scholar Pelham Edgar and the artist Edmund Morris were
affirmed by their joining the Commission in 1906. In that way, the Treaty Commission
played a part in consolidating the network of Canadian artists and intellectuals of which
Scott was a charter member.
For Jacques Soustelle the Mexico he first encountered in the 1930s would inspire
and comfort him for the rest of his turbulent life. The understanding of Mexico that he
garnered in that initial voyage would echo in his academic writings and even political
speeches. To this day, Soustelle is a respected authority on Mexican ethnology.139
Admirers of Soustelle’s trenchant works on Mexican Indians are faced with a singular
conundrum: why was he incapable of exhibiting a similar empathy for those beaten down
by one hundred and twenty-five years of French domination of Algeria? Like Scott,
Soustelle was the inheritor of a refined colonial system. As we shall see, Soustelle’s
ideas, actions and dilemmas in Algeria are part of a French intellectual tradition
For example, Les Quatre Soleils – Souvenirs et reflexions d’un ethnologue au Mexique was re-published
by CNRS of Paris in 2009. Soustelle’s doctoral thesis of 1936 was published in Spanish as “La familia
Otomí-Pame” in 1993 by Centro de los Estudios Mexicanos y Centroamericanos in Mexico City. As of July
2009, the book was available in bookstores in both Mexico City and Oaxaca. Soustelle’s The Daily Life of
the Aztecs originally published in French in 1955 was re-published by Dover Press of New York in 2002.
139
122
concerning matters of colonialism and imperialism that run throughout the thoughts of
Alexis de Tocqueville in the 1830s to Albert Camus, Franz Fanon and Jean-Paul Sartre in
the 1950s and 60s.
123
4. Burden of Empire
Burden of Empire
Duncan Campbell Scott and Jacques Soustelle were formed and transformed during
pivotal voyages early in their careers. This chapter examines the ways in which Scott and
Soustelle represented their respective nation’s imperial ideals at critical junctures in their
lives. Each man was an exponent of an elaborate imperial tradition; further, both Scott and
Soustelle were called on to represent their nation’s imperial legacy at decisive historical
moments.
Imperial Legacies
Jacques Soustelle incarnated the contradictory impulses surrounding imperialism
in post-Revolutionary France. Since 1789, France has been both aggressively imperialistic
and eloquently anti-imperialistic, often at the same time. In 1955, as a man of politics and
the academy, Soustelle represented a tradition that uneasily encompassed both the colonial
leaders who savagely quelled Native revolts in the French empire and the likes of the pied
noir writer Albert Camus and French Caribbean apostles of decolonization such as Aimée Césaire and Franz Fanon.1
When Jacques Soustelle was named governor general of Algeria in 1955 France
had been in Algeria for 125 years. At the time, almost no one in either France or Algeria
was predicting that the French would be gone seven years later.2 Since 1830, a
1
Aimé Césaire, Discours Sur Le Colonialisme (Paris: Présence Africaine, 1976; 1955) ; Frantz Fanon, Les
Damnes de la terre préface de Jean-Paul Sartre (Paris: Maspero, 1961); Albert Camus, Actuelles : Écrits
Politiques (Paris: Gallimard, 1977).
2
Ian Lustick, State-Building Failure in British Ireland & French Algeria (Berkeley: iiS Institute of
States, International Studies, University of California, Berkeley, 1985), 72-3. See also, Lustick, Unsettled
124
succession of governments including a restored Bourbon monarchy, the constitutional
monarchy of the King Louis-Philippe, the ‘liberal empire’ of Napoleon III, the second,
third and fourth republics, and the Vichy regime, supported l’Algérie française.3 Until the
late 1950s, socialists and communists joined in the general enthusiasm for France’s
mission civilisatrice in Algeria. Many French people, across a broad ideological
spectrum, championed metropolitan control over Algeria, an extension of France, merely
separated from the motherland by the Mediterranean.
Duncan Campbell Scott came of age as Canada was in its infancy as a nation-state
and as such he was also a leading technician of a particular imperial system. Scott began
his career in 1879, only three years after the passage of Canada’s Indian Act, which
consolidated various colonial laws the fledgling state inherited from its British parent.4
Indian policy was a matter of fundamental importance to the new country and Scott
himself was present at the creation of Canadian Indian policy. He was a central figure in
the process of adapting Indian policies inherited from British North America to serve
Canadian national purposes. In 1879, the Canadian Pacific Railway had not even reached
the Canadian prairies, let alone the Pacific Ocean in distant British Columbia. The
political leadership and emerging civil service of the nascent state had to “civilize” the
tribes of Indians between zones of settlement in Ontario and the new province of British
Disputed Lands: Britain and Ireland, France and Algeria, Israel and the West Bank-Gaza (Ithaca, N.Y.:
Cornell University Press, 1993), 239-301, 317; see also Lustick, “Two-State Illusion: The idea of a state for
Palestinians and one for Israelis is a fantasy that blinds us and impedes progress,” The New York Times,
Sunday Review, 1. Lustick argues that errors in judgment of French rulers in Algeria are being repeated in
the Middle East.
3
The literature containing the narrative history of France’ history in Algeria is extensive. Two principal
works are, Yves Courrière, La Guerre d'Algérie (Paris: Fayard, 2001); and Alistair Horne, A Savage War of
Peace: Algeria, 1954-1962 (New York: Viking Press, 1978).
4
Olive Dickason, Canada’s First Nations: A History Of Founding Peoples From Earliest Times (Toronto:
McClelland and Stewart, 1992), 257-72; J.R. Miller, Skyscrapers Hide The Heavens: A History Of IndianWhite Relations In Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989), 83-98; E. Brian Titley, A Narrow
Vision: Duncan Campbell Scott And The Administration Of Indian Affairs In Canada (Vancouver, UBC
Press, 1986), 1-11.
125
Columbia. That responsibility fell to the Indian Department, then part of the Ministry of
the Interior. Consequently, the young Duncan Campbell Scott, hired by his father’s
friend, the Prime Minister, may have started out humbly enough as a clerk, but he was
destined to spend a career in a Department with very serious undertakings of the new
Dominion as its brief.
As we have seen, in 1905-1906 Duncan Campbell Scott represented Canada in
Treaty negotiations in the north. As a functionary of the Canadian Indian Department,
Scott was part of a tradition of Indian policy that had its origins in the Royal Proclamation
of 1763, which established guidelines for British policies towards Indians following the
conquest of New France.5 Throughout his career at the Department, which spanned more
than half a century (1879-1932), Scott honed policies and administrative procedures
rooted in British imperial practice. In the three or four decades leading to Canadian
confederation in 1867, British imperial theorists, colonial administrators, and politicians,
debated settler colonialism and Native policy for Australia, Canada, the Cape
colonies in southern Africa and New Zealand.6 The literature concerning the traditions
5
Dickason, Canada’s First Nations, 181-88; J.R. Miller, Compact, Contract, Covenant: Aboriginal TreatyMaking in Canada (Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press, 2009), 66-70.
6
See for example Hugh Brody, Maps and Dreams: Indians and the British Columbia Frontier (Vancouver:
Douglas & McIntyre, 1981); Colin Bundy, The Rise & Fall of the South African Peasantry (Cape Town
and London: David Phillip – James Currey, 1979);Sarah Carter, Lost Harvests (McGill-Queen's Native and
Northern Series. Vol. 3. Montreal Que.: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1990); Cole R. Harris, Making
Native Space : Colonialism, Resistance, and Reserves in British Columbia (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2002);
John S. Milloy, “The Era Of Civilization – British Policy For The Indians of Canada, 1830-1860” (PhD
dissertation, Oxford University, 1978); Noël Mostert. Frontiers : The Epic of South Africa's Creation and
the Tragedy of the Xhosa People (New York: Knopf : Distributed by Random House, 1992); Adele Perry,
On The Edge of Empire: Gender, Race and the Making of British Columbia, 1849-1871 (Toronto, Buffalo,
London: University of Toronto Press, 2001); Henry Reynolds, The Other Side of the Frontier : Aboriginal
Resistance to the European Invasion of Australia (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982); E. Brian Titley, A
Narrow Vision: Duncan Campbell Scott and the Administration of Indian Affairs in Canada (Vancouver:
University of British Columbia Press, 1986)
In 1995, I directed and produced the video documentary We Have Such Things At Home, a comparative
examination of Native policy in Canada and South Africa. (Toronto: produced by Tamarack Productions –
distribution www.vtape.org)
126
and practice of British imperialism is vast. In this chapter, I focus on select foundational
texts that situate Scott as a political actor for a Canadian Indian Department that was
spawned directly from British imperialism. From the 1830s to the 1860s, British
academic and colonial administrator Herman Merivale wrote and lectured about Native
policy in the empire.7 Following confederation the Canadian Indian Department soon
found itself enmeshed in the dilemmas and contradictions that Merivale had
foreshadowed. In 1879, the year Scott was hired, the Canadian government asked
journalist and politician Nicholas Flood Davin to study American ‘industrial schools’ for
Indians. The ‘Davin report’ gave rise to Canada’s own system of residential schools for
Indian children. Merivale and Davin’s texts define the spectrum of Canadian imperial
policy, from an approach tempered by Christian humanism that respected some aspects of
Indian culture, on the one hand, and aggressive civilization on the other which proposed a
rapid transitional phase to outright assimilation into a presumed Canadian mainstream.
Canadian Indian policy has uneasily resided between these poles since Confederation. It
suffered its most contradictory and lethal phase during the tenure of Duncan Campbell
Scott in the Indian Department. As Keith Smith has argued, when the new Canadian state
asserted its hegemony westward, an aggressive Indian policy steeped in imperial tradition
was a foundational tool:
While imperialism and colonialism are never the same in any two
situations, Euro-Canadians imposed themselves on the territory and First Nations
of western Canada in many ways parallel to British interventions elsewhere. They
brought with them generally British cultural understandings, legal and political
structures, social and gender hierarchies and capitalist economy. They were just
7
Herman Merivale, Lectures on Colonization and Colonies (London: Longman, Orme, Brown, Green,
and Longmans, 1841); David McNab, "Herman Merivale and the Native Question, 1837-1861"
Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies 9, no. 4 (Winter, 1977): 359-384; Dickason,
First Nations, 248, 264-5.
127
as prepared as Britons in Africa or India to promote and protect their economic
interests and cultural values, with force, if necessary.8
Canada’s Indian Department during the career of Duncan Campbell Scott waged a
comprehensive assault on the lands, resources and intricate life ways of Indigenous
peoples. The new Dominion of Canada strove to develop and project an identity as a
modern nation respectful of its English - French duality, but determinedly British,
monarchist, white and male in its essential character.
The imperial legacies that informed Scott and Soustelle both depended on what
Uday Singh Mehta has called “liberal strategies of exclusion.”9 The British and French
systems, as well as the Canadian system of internal colonialism, demanded that Natives,
be they Arab, Berber, Indian, Métis or Inuit, be excluded from supposedly universal
liberal norms of democratic inclusion. The ironies and contradictions in the policies that
these ‘best and brightest’ men implemented are illuminated by examining in some detail
the machinery of such exclusionary strategies in French Algeria and post-confederation
Canada. Scott as a representative of a new dominion and Soustelle as representative of
French republicanism were pledged to uphold what they saw as the ideals of western
democracy. Yet both men violated those ideals in the pursuit of policies they deemed to
be essential to the growth of a mitigated democracy in Canada and a severely limited
form of representative government in French Algeria. At the very same time this apparent
contradiction is less contradictory than it first appears. Mehta and other scholars argue
8
Keith D Smith, Liberalism, Surveillance, and Resistance: Indigenous Communities in Western Canada
(Edmonton: AU Press, 2009), 8.
9
Uday Sing Mehta. “Liberal Strategies of Exclusion” in Frederic Cooper and Ann Stoler (eds.) Tensions of
Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World (Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California
Press, 1997), 59-62; See also Mehta, Liberalism and Empire: A Study in Nineteenth-Century British Liberal
Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999).
128
that historic actors like Scott and Soustelle, rather than being exceptions from liberalism,
acted in a manner thoroughly consistent with the intellectual bedrock of British and
French liberalism.10 My purpose here is to draw from the careers of Scott and Soustelle as
a means to highlight their nations fundamental inability to engage effectively with
Indigenous peoples.
As nineteenth-century nation-states emerged, whether in concert with or in
opposition to imperial powers, they simultaneously developed mitigated forms of
democracy (women and those without property were more often than not excluded from
the franchise) and barred specific groups from participating in aspects of political and
economic practice.11 Sets of conditions about matters including notions of property, the
accumulation of individual wealth, the treatment of women and adherence to Christian
faiths were employed to bar Indigenous peoples and others from full admittance to the
circle of civilized men who could rightly expect democratic and human rights. Uday
Singh Mehta observes that liberal appraisals of human capacity lead logically to a sort of
‘private members only’ club. The requisite conditions for membership preclude the very
universality the ideology pretends to uphold:
…what is concealed behind the endorsement of these universal capacities are the
specific cultural and psychological conditions woven in as preconditions for the
actualization of these capacities. Liberal exclusion works by modulating the
10
See Ian Mackay, "The Liberal Order Framework: A Prospectus for a Reconnaissance of Canadian
History." Canadian Historical Review 81, no. 4 (Dec. 2000), 627-8, 640, 644; Jennifer Pitts, “Empire and
Democracy: Tocqueville and the Algeria Question”, The Journal of Political Philosophy, Volume 8,
Number 3, 2000, 295-318; See also Pitts, A Turn To Empire: The Rise of Imperial Liberalism in Britain
and France (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2005), 138-147, 204-18; Lucien Sève,
« Trois réflexions sur le libéralisme, » LE MONDE diplomatique, Juin 2013 page 22 – In this review essay,
Sève looks at three recent publications in French that look at liberalism in the light of precepts of universal
human rights. Of these works, Domenico Losurdo’s is most pertinent to this dissertation; Domenico
Losurdo, Contre-histoire du libéralisme, traduit de l’italien par Bernard Chamayou (Paris: Découverte,
2013); Losurdo, Liberalism: a counter history, translated by Greg Elliott (London : Verso, 2011).
11
See Mehta, “Liberal Strategies”; Pitts, A Turn To Empire, 9, 63, 235, 248; Tzvetan Todorov, Nous Et Les
Autres : La Réflexion Française Sur La Diversité Humaine (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1989), 262-79.
129
distance between the interstices of human capacities and the conditions for their
political effectivity. It is the content between the interstices that settles boundaries
between who is included and who is not.12
Liberal Exclusion in Canada
The tendency to exclude was apparent in the founding moments of the Canadian
state. Conferences in 1864 Charlottetown and Quebec City led to the promulgation of the
British North America Act (BNA Act) and limited Canadian independence from Great
Britain in 1867. Conference delegations were made up exclusively of caucasian men who
represented the political and economic elites of the various British colonies which would
unite to form Canada. There were no representatives of the various Indigenous groups
from those colonies. The division of powers in the federal system outlined in the BNA Act
entrenched this exclusion in the very machinery of the new state. “Indians, and lands
reserved for Indians” became a federal responsibility.13 Public lands and the timber
resources were placed under provincial jurisdiction at the time of confederation; as
Canada expanded westward and new provinces were created, legal precedent and
political talks confirmed that oil, gas and mineral resources within provinces were under
14
provincial control as well. As the signatories of Treaty 9, and as many other Indigenous
peoples who signed Treaties with the Canadian government, learned in the course of
12
Mehta , “Liberal Strategies,” 61. For a useful specific example in the northern Canadian context of the
1970s in the midst of and gas exploration see Mel Watkins and University League for Social Reform. Dene
Nation, The Colony Within (Toronto; Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1977)
13
Sec. 91.42 The Constitution Act, Canada. Websource:
http://laws.justice.gc.ca/en/const/3.html#anchorbo-ga:s_91-gb:s_91 (accessed May 2010).
14
Sections 92.5 and 92a The Constitution Act, Canada. Websource:
http://laws.justice.gc.ca/en/const/3.html#anchorbo-ga:s_91-gb:s_91 (accessed May 2010)
Such arrangements are part of the bedrock of Canada’s constitutional existence. After a century of national
life, Canadians attempted to revise the British North America Act on several occasions. Finally in 1982 was
the BNA Act was repatriated. Despite the inclusion of new recognition for “existing aboriginal and treaty
rights”, the crucial provincial-federal jurisdictional divide over resources was maintained. Such a division
of powers was constitutionally entrenched in 1982 when the BNA Act became The Constitution Act.
130
twentieth century, this division of powers placed rural-based Indigenous peoples whose
economic lives depended on harvesting natural resources in a tenuous economic and
constitutional position. As Robin Jarvis Brownlie and other scholars have shown,
provincial management of natural resources outside the strict boundaries of the federal
lands “reserved” for Indigenous peoples under the numbered Treaties undermined
economies based on fishing, hunting, trapping and sustainable forestry practices.15 In the
‘liberal strategy of exclusion’ developed in Canada, the Indigenous wards of the federal
state often became targets of jealous provincial jurisdiction over natural resources.
In July 1905 when Duncan Campbell Scott and the Treaty 9 Commission arrived
at Osnaburgh at the headwaters of the Albany River these matters were central to what
became a protracted debate over treaty terms. In his Scribner’s account, Scott described
the scene that welcomed him and the Treaty Commission at two o’clock in the afternoon
on July 11th, 1905,
But even the dogs of Osnaburgh gave no sound. The Indians stood in line
outside the palisades, the old blind chief, Missabay, with his son and a few of the
chief men in the centre, the young fellows on the outskirts, and women by
themselves, separated as they are always. A solemn hand-shaking ensued; never
once did the stoicism of the race betray any interest in the preparations as we
pitched our tents and displayed a camp equipage simple enough, but to them of
the highest novelty; and all our negotiations were conducted under like conditions
– intense alertness and curiosity with no outward manifestation of the slightest
interest.16
15
Robin Brownlie, A Fatherly Eye: Indian Agents, Government Power, and Aboriginal Resistance in
Ontario, 1918-1939 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 86, 156; Mari Heinrichs & Dianne
Hiebert with the People of Mishkeegogamang, Mishkeegogamang: The Land, The People & The Purpose
(Kelowna, British Columbia: Rosetta Projects, 2003), 91-2, 119. See also Harris, Native Space and Paul
Tennant, Aboriginal Peoples and Politics: The Indian Land Question in British Columbia, 1849-1989
(Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1990) for a discussion of these issue regarding British
Columbia and
16
Duncan Campbell Scott, “ The Last Of The Indian Treaties,” Scribner’s Magazine, Vol X.L. - 62, 1906,
577.
131
To the surprise of the Treaty Commissioners the “stoicism of the race” contained some
skepticism of the treaty terms which had been agreed upon in advance by the federal
government in Ottawa and the province of Ontario. The blind Chief Missabay stated that
his people were prepared to accept the promised benefits of education and economic
development provided that the Treaty would allow tribal members to hunt, fish, trap and
gather wild rice in traditional territories, activities which were among the economic and
cultural mainstays for the people of Osnaburgh. As the official Treaty report under the
signature of the Commissioners recounts,
Missabay, the recognized chief of the band, then spoke, expressing the
fears of the Indians that, if they signed the treaty, they would be compelled to
reside upon the reserve to be set apart from them, and would be deprived of the
fishing and hunting privileges which they now enjoy.
On being informed that their fears in regard to both these matters were
groundless, as their present manner of making their livelihood would in no way be
interfered with, the Indians talked the matter over among themselves, and then
asked to be given to the following day to prepare their reply.17
Both the official Treaty report as well as Scott’s account in Scribner’s magazine state that
after a night’s deliberation, Missabay and his council declared that given they were
satisfied traditional activities would continue and they agreed to sign the treaty. Scholars
continue to question the mutual understanding that was achieved in such negotiations and
in the case of Treaty 9 whether the Commissioners simply lied about the true intent of the
terms.18 Scott’s journalistic account of the proceedings at Osnaburgh lends credence to
Government of Canada, The James Bay Treaty – Treaty No. 9 LAC RG10 Vol. 3033, 235, 225
See J.R. Miller, Compact, Contract, Covenant: Aboriginal Treaty Making in Canada (Toronto, Buffalo,
London: University of Toronto Press, 2009), 207-11; John Flood, “The Duplicity of D.C. Scott and the
James Bay Treaty” Black Moss Sec. Series, No. 2 (Fall 1976), 50-63; John S. Long, Treaty no. 9 Making the
Agreement to Share the Land in Far Northern Ontario in 1905. (Montreal & Kingston, London, Ithaca:
McGill-Queen's University Press, 2010), 3-9, 85; CBC Radio Ideas, “George MacMartin’s Big Canoe
Trip,” first broadcast December 19, 2011. Radio documentary written and presented by Christopher Moore,
produced by Sarah Wolch about Treaty 9 promises as recorded in diary of MacMartin, Treaty 9
Commissioner for Ontario. National English language radio service of the Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation, Toronto broadcast centre.
17
18
132
the view that the Indigenous peoples along the Albany River were assured of the
economic rights under the Treaty,
“Well for all this,” replied Missabay, “we will have to give up our hunting and live
on the land you give us, and how can we live without hunting?” So they were
assured that they were not expected to give up their hunting-grounds, that they
might hunt and fish throughout all the country just as they had done in the past, but
they were to be good subjects of the King, their great father, whose messengers we
were. That was satisfying, and we always thought that the idea of
a reserve became pleasant to them when they learned that so far as that piece of
land was concerned they were the masters of the white man, could say to him
“You have no right here; take your traps, pull down your shanty and begone.”19
The procedure at Osnaburgh sheds light on the peculiar give and take of Canadian
Indian policy in the early post-confederation period. The Treaty 9 process was consistent
with the provisions of the Royal Proclamation of 1763. The proclamation set out in some
detail the means by which the new Indian allies of the Crown should be treated. The
Proclamation dictated that Indians “should not be molested or disturbed in the Possession
of such Parts of Our Dominions and Territories as, not having been ceded to or purchased
by Us, are reserved to them. or any of them, as their Hunting Grounds…” The
Proclamation also stated explicitly the formal process by which Indian title could be
surrendered,
And whereas great Frauds and Abuses have been committed in purchasing
Lands of the Indians, to the great Prejudice of our Interests. and to the great
Dissatisfaction of the said Indians: In order, therefore, to prevent such
Irregularities for the future, and to the end that the Indians may be convinced of
our Justice and determined Resolution to remove all reasonable Cause of
Discontent, We do. with the Advice of our Privy Council strictly enjoin and
require. that no private Person do presume to make any purchase from the said
Indians of any Lands reserved to the said Indians, within those parts of our
Colonies where, We have thought proper to allow Settlement: but that. if at any
Time any of the Said Indians should be inclined to dispose of the said Lands, the
same shall be Purchased only for Us, in our Name, at some public Meeting or
http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/episodes/2011/12/19/george-macmartins-big-canoe-trip/ (accessed December 20,
2011).
19
Scott, “Treaties,” 578.
133
Assembly of the said Indians, to be held for that Purpose by the Governor or
Commander in Chief of our Colony respectively within which they shall lie:20
Proceeding in a manner outlined in the Royal Proclamation, Scott and his fellow
commissioners were the selected representatives of the Crown ‘in the right of Canada’
during the Treaty 9 Commission. The Commission held public meetings at each of the
villages where formal Treaty signings took place. The Commissioners’ conspicuous
display of the British flag, the RCMP officers in full uniform and the holding of feasts of
tea, bannock sweetened with raisins, and bacon provided by the Treaty Commission in the
Osnaburgh palisade symbolized the venerable eighteenth-century pledge. In these ways,
the Treaty 9 signing marked an inclusion of a kind for the people of Osnaburgh.
They were formally accepted in the Canadian federal constitutional system with the status
of wards of the federal government in Ottawa. Their eventual ‘civilization’ and ability to
participate fully in the Canadian democracy (such as it was) depended on the successful
outcome of their tutelage.
With the imposition of the reserve system, the development of residential schools
and crackdowns on Indigenous spirituality and political organization, Canada evolved a
labyrinth of inherently contradictory strategies to, on the one hand, marginalize Indians,
and, on the other, aggressively ‘civilize’ them. Canadian historian Ian Mackay dissected
these moves in an influential article which he developed further in a book on liberal order
in Canada inspired by his original essay.21 Mackay encourages his peers to examine
20
Royal Proclamation, October 7, 1763. Websource: http://www.johnco.com/nativel/pro1763.html
(accessed May 2012).
21
McKay, "Canada as a Long Liberal Revolution: On Writing the History of Actually Existing Canadian
Liberalisms," in Jean-Francois Constant and Michel Ducharme, eds Liberalism and Hegemony: Debating
the Canadian Liberal Revolution (Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press, 2009), 347-352 .
134
Canada’s liberal traditions in new ways that would, among other things, demand a reexamination of Canadian “Indian” policy,
It would mean a re-evaluation of Ottawa’s handling of the “Indian question” as
not just a series of misunderstandings premised on a distanced misreading of
Native societies, but rather as a fulfillment of liberal norms, which required the
subordination of alternatives. Canadian imperialism in the High Arctic and in the
West was not incidentally related to the Canadian values articulated by the
‘Ottawa men’ of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. From Joseph Howe
and John A. Macdonald down to the 1940s, there was a consistency of approach
to Amerindian issues which invites theorization within a liberal-order research
program. It was perhaps in the residential school system that the full utopianism
of a vanguard liberalism came to the fore, for within these Christian/liberal
manufactories of individuals, pre-eminent laboratories of liberalism, First Nations
children were ‘forced to be free’, in the very particular liberal sense of ‘free,’ even
at the cost of their lives.22
Their status would also be defined by their exclusion from voting in federal elections – a
prohibition that Canada maintained for Indian people residing on reserves until 1960 with
the passage of the Bill of Rights by the government of John Diefenbaker.23 This potent
‘exclusion’ had immediate political consequences as Canada added territory and granted
provincial status to its western territories. For example, when Manitoba initially became a
small province in 1870, the majority of the population was Aboriginal, either Métis or
Indian.24 Indians living on reserves were denied the right to vote and the Canadian state
imposed itself on Aboriginals as late nineteenth-century Winnipeg enjoyed an
unprecedented real estate boom and the rich agricultural lands of southern Manitoba were
flooded with settlers.25 Similarly, approximately 70% of the population of British
Mckay, "Liberal Order Framework.”
Dickason, Canada’s First Nations, 400.
24
J. Arthur Lower, Western Canada: An Outline History (Vancouver and Toronto: Douglas & McIntyre,
1983), 96-7.
25
W.L. Morton, Manitoba: A History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1967), 117; Gerald Friesen,
River Road: essays on Manitoba and Prairie History (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 1996), 5864.
22
23
135
Columbia was Indigenous at the moment the province joined Canada in 1871.26 As Indian
wards of the federal Canadian state, these people had no voting rights. In addition,
provincial governments denied Indians in British Columbia the sort of public meetings
and Treaty negotiations that the Royal Proclamation guaranteed. With the exception of a
few treaties on Vancouver Island negotiated by colonial governor James Douglas prior to
Confederation, the federal and provincial governments negotiated no treaties until well
into the twentieth century in British Columbia. The situation prevailed until the Nisga’a of
the spectacular, resource rich Nass Valley in north-western British Columbia began
tripartite talks with the provincial government in Victoria and its federal counterpart in
Ottawa in the 1990s.27
In Canada, the transition from colony to nation meant a hardening of Indian
policy. In this regard, Canada must be seen in the international context of nation-state
formation in the nineteenth century. As national borders replaced the mutable boundaries
between spheres of imperial influence, nascent nation-states asserted their own system of
land entitlement and resource management. The result for a fledgling Canada and
elsewhere in the Americas, as Jeremy Adelman and Stephen Aron demonstrated in a
pivotal borderlands essay, meant a loss of prestige and power for Indian groups which had
been influential military allies, guides and had provided invaluable expertise on nutrition,
weather and other matters in pre-industrial colonial conditions for French, Spanish and
English dominions. 28
26
Jean Barman, The West Beyond the West: A History of British Columbia. 3rd ed. Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 2007, 156.
27
Barman, West Beyond, 339.
28
Jeremy Adelman and Stephen Aron, “From Borderlands to Borders: Empires, Nation-States, and the
Peoples in between in North American History,” The American Historical Review, Vol. 104, No. 3 (Jun.,
1999) 817-23.
136
Liberal Exclusions in French Algeria: Republican Universalism versus Settler
Colonialism
In the autumn of 1954, François Mitterand, then France’s Minister of the Interior,
turned to his opposition in the National Assembly to name the Gaullist deputy and
respected academic Jacques Soustelle Governor General of Algeria. After a fractious
political process that would see one government fall, due in no small part to right-wing
opposition to that nomination (the historic ironies are endless in this particular dossier),
Soustelle was named again by a centrist coalition that succeeded the government of
Pierre Mendès-France in which Mitterand had served. Finally in January 1955, Soustelle
climbed aboard an aircraft bound for Algiers.29 Before landing he donned a fine suit and
was then greeted at the airport outside the colonial capital by a group of French Algerian
politicians. At that very moment, Soustelle stepped into a role in which he assumed
executive responsibility for a cluster of liberal policies that formed a labyrinth of
“strategies of exclusion”. France had conquered Algeria in 1830. Every French
government from that time on were convinced the economic opportunities and France’s
mission civilisatrice demanded that France remain.
It is very difficult to overstate the magnitude of the Algerian question to French
identity politics, culture and intellectual life during the 132 years of French rule there.
Raymond Aron, Pierre Bourdieu, Albert Camus, Franz Fanon, Jules Ferry, Gustave
Flaubert, André Gide, Guy de Maupassant, Auguste Renoir, Camille Saint-Saens, JeanPaul Sartre and Alexis de Tocqueville are some of the internationally prominent French
29
Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962 (New York: New York Review of Books,
2006 – originally published 1977), 105-9; Bernard Ullmann, Jacques Soustelle – Le Mal aimé (Paris: Plon,
1995), 190-5.
137
cultural and political figures whose careers and thinking were significantly shaped by the
Algeria.30
The stakes were very high indeed when Jacques Soustelle was named to the
governorship of Algeria. Earlier in 1954, the French were defeated by Vietnamese
revolutionaries in French Indo China. In November, an unanticipated armed revolt
erupted in l’Algérie française. France’s post World War II standing in the world was
suddenly at risk. Although the situation across the Mediterranean was troublesome, no
one seemed aware that the final chapter in France’s history as ruler of Algeria was
approaching a calamitous, bloody end. François Mitterand, future Président de la
République, turned to Soustelle at a pivotal moment. It was a shock nomination in which
political foes suggested they could set aside their differences for the greater national good
and to enhance the nation’s standing in the world. There was bipartisan hope that
Soustelle’s understanding of the Mexican Indigenous cultures could be applied to
enhance understanding between Algerian Moslems and European settlers.31
This dissertation cannot offer a comprehensive history of the process of French decolonization following World War II. At this time, however, it is essential to convey the
broad outlines of the situation in which Soustelle was thrust. 32 On November 2, 1954, just
weeks prior to Mitterand’s surprising announcement, France had suffered a shocking and
humiliating wake up call in Algeria. On “le Tout Saint”, All Saints’ Day, Algerian
30
Philippe Baudorre and Centre d'études et de recherches sur François Mauriac. La Plume Dans La Plaie:
Les Écrivains Journalistes Et La Guerre d'Algérie. Sémaphores. Pessac: Presses universitaires de.
Bordeaux, 2003; James D. Le Sueur, Uncivil War : Intellectuals and Identity Politics during the
Decolonization of Algeria (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001) Le Sueur, “Decolonizing
French Universalism’: Reconsidering the impact of the Algerian War on French intellectuals,” in The
‘Decolonization Reader. New York ; London: Routledge, 2003; Pascal Ory et Jean-François Sirinelli. Les
Intellectuels En France, De l'Affaire Dreyfus à Nos Jours (Paris: A. Colin, 1986).
31
Horne, Savage War, 105-7.
32
Two of the best general histories on the Algerian-French war are:
Yves Courrière, La Guerre d'Algérie (Paris: Fayard, 2001): Horne, Savage War.
138
rebels mounted a multi-pronged attack on French settlers, military and police installations
in many parts of Algeria. A mysterious organization known as le Front de Libération
National (FLN) claimed credit. Suddenly what French generals and politicians had hitherto
described as merely a few out-of-touch ‘bandits’ lurking in the mountains representing no
one appeared as a threat with which to be reckoned.33
The timing of the attack was calculated for maximum psychological effect. “Le
Tout Saint” came hard on the heels of a greater humiliation for France: Dien Bien Phu. In
the spring of 1954, on the other side of the world in French Indochina, the post Second
World War era of de-colonization began in earnest for the French when Vietnamese
nationalist forces under the political leadership of Ho Chi Minh and the military
stewardship of the brilliant General Vo Nguyen Giap, who had both been trained at the
finest French educational institutions, destroyed a French military base at Dien Bien Phu.
It was a French defeat that echoed around the world – a well-trained, peasant army of
small, brown-skinned men defeated a European army in a fixed battle with big
guns.34Historians of French foreign policy identify the battle for Dien Bien Phu as a key
moment for the decolonization process that would accelerate in the coming decades.35
By the autumn of 1954, the social democratic French Prime Minister Pierre
Mendès-France made the fateful decision to make peace with the Vietnamese
33
Horne, Savage War, 83-104.
For a look back at Dien Bien Phu see The Ghosts of War, Michael Maclear, director, Memory Films
2004. Maclear, a Canadian, was the English-speaking world’s preeminent broadcast journalist on the wars
in Viet Nam for 30 years. The Ghosts of War is his essay-like documentary film reflecting on imperialism,
war and lessons unlearned.
35
Horne, Savage War, 67-8, 99, 168-9; Alain-Gérard Slama, La Guerre d'Algérie: Histoire d'Une
Déchirure (Paris: Gallimard, 1996), 46; Denise Bouche, Histoire De La Colonisation Francaise, Tome
Second, Flux Et Reflux (1815-1962) (Paris: Fayard, 1991), 430, 434, 447-9.
34
139
nationalists.36 Viet Nam was divided between a communist north controlled by Ho Chi
Minh’s government and a wobbly pro-western south. Thus, the stage for American
involvement in defending south Viet Nam was set and the imperial wheel took a different
turn. In France, the loss of Indochina led to political recrimination and national soul
searching. The military and political right bemoaned Mendès-France’s position. The left
generally approved of Mendès-France and saw in him the prospects of a post-imperial,
humanistic, de-colonizing republicanism. Much of the respectable media, leading
intellectuals and politicians of the centre and the left hoped France’s withdrawal from
‘l’Indochine’ would make France a moral leader in the west’s approach to nations that
would have to emerge from the enduring colonialisms and mandates of the mid-twentieth
century.37 To that hope was appended a firm belief: Algeria would remain French. After
all, it was not a colony, it was part of France.38
In terms of French administration, Algeria was in fact actually not a colony. It was
an extension of France divided into large départements around the principal cities of
Alger, Constantine and Oran in its northern littoral zones and an expansive, exotic
Saharan territory to the south. That is why it fell to the Minister of the Interior, the future
President François Mitterand, to name Soustelle governor general. Algeria came under the
interior ministry’s brief, not the ministry of colonies. While governments based in Paris
had declared Algeria part of France, it was clear that Paris and local politicians of
European descent were in political control that made Algeria a colony in fact, if not in
name. Full political rights were available only those of European background,
36
Bouche, Colonisation Francaise, 430, 434, 447-9; Horne, Savage War, 78-9, 89, 98-9, 166, 268, 376,
434; Girardet, L’Idée coloniale, 343-7.
37
Girardet, L’Idée coloniale, 367-402.
38
Lustick, State-Building Failures, 72-6; Horne, Savage War, 99-100.
140
approximately 10% of the population.39 This settler population had grown to about two
million people by 1955 – they were largely of French, Spanish, Italian and Maltese
descent. Despite the intentions of the leftist Popular Front government of Léon Blum
prior to World War II, as well as vague commitments made by General Charles de Gaulle
following liberation, the French had not made good on promises to gradually extend the
franchise on an equal basis to the overwhelming majority of Algerians of Moslem
descent.40 A small number of highly educated Algerian Moslems could vote in French
elections; most were limited to voting in a second college of Moslem members that had
limited impact on government policies.41
After the humiliation of Dien Bien Phu, the French government was further
resolved to hold on to Algeria.42 Prior to 1955, no political formation or visible rebel
group in Algeria clamoured for independence. After the bloodletting of “le Tout Saint”,
the government immediately made clear that Algeria would never be abandoned.
Soustelle was brought in to hasten long promised reforms. Indeed, the loss of Indochina
only steeled a very broad consensus among the French to hold on to Algeria at all costs.
France had faced the humiliation of Nazi occupation. With liberation came the realization
that “old Europe” had been supplanted in global influence by the United States and the
Soviet Union. As the French imperial historian Raoul Girardet points out, Dien Bien Phu
was compared to another French defeat - this one of eighteenth-century in Canada,
Durant plusieurs générations, les jeunes Français avaient appris, sur les bancs
de l’école publique, à considérer comme l’un des pires épisodes du « malheureux
39
Horne, Savage War, 36-7, 41, 346; Slama, Déchirure, 22-9.
Charles-Robert Ageron, Histoire De l'Algérie Contemporaine (Paris: Presses universitaires de France,
1979), 94-8; Bernard Droz et Évelyne Lever. Histoire De La Guerre d'Algérie (1954-1962) (Paris: Seuil,
1982), 33-6; Slama, Déchirure, 28-9; Horne, Savage War, 36-7, 41.
41
Ibid.
42
Horne, Savage War,67-8, 175-6.
40
141
règne de Louis XV » la signature du « honteux traité » de Paris, qui avait livré aux
anglais le Canada et l’Inde. En fait devant la désagrégation de l’Union française,
c’est tout le système des valeurs élaboré par le civisme républicain et considéré,
jusqu’aux lendemains de la seconde guerre mondiale comme constituant le
fondement même de la conscience nationale qui est apparu aux yeux de beaucoup,
comme brusquement et totalement remis en cause. Et c’est aussi dans la fidélité à
ce système de valeurs que beaucoup ont trouvé la justification passionnée de leur
attitude.43
Initially criticism of Soustelle’s unexpected appointment came from the political
right in Paris and the hard-line settler faction in Algeria itself. As the prospect was
debated by the press and politicians in Paris, some hard-line settlers in Algiers went so far
as to suggest that Soustelle was an Arabic Jew coming to dispossess the European
population.44 More moderate opponents merely worried whether Soustelle, the academic
who specialized in Mexican Indians, would be serious about political and economic
reforms to which most previous Governors General had paid lip service.45 Indeed in his
short and eventful tenure as Governor General in 1955-6, Soustelle would undertake a
broad range of ill-fated reforms. In the late fall of 1955, speculation about his plans for
Algeria was front-page news. After consulting with his wartime mentor de Gaulle by
telephone, Soustelle agreed to take the job even though it was proffered by an antiGaullist government.46
The Algerian whirlwind that Jacques Soustelle entered in 1955 dominated his
career for the next decade; it transformed and tarnished his standing among French
intellectuals. However, the ideas that he advanced as Governor General in 1955-56 were
Girardet, L’Idée coloniale, 340.
Horne, Savage War, 105-7 ; Ullmann, mal aimé, 186-90.
45
Horne, Savage War, 105-7.
46
Ullmann, 1995; Jacques Soustelle, “Souvenirs, Apocryphes en forme de dialogue avec George Suffert” c.
1986. (unpublished manuscript provided to the author by Bernard Ullmann); Odile Rudelle, Archives de
l’Université Sciences-Po Fondation national des sciences politiques service des archives d’histoire
contemporain – Témoignages sur la guerre d’Algérie recueillis par Mme Odile Rudelle - M. Jacques
Soustelle 19 février 1979.
43
44
142
consistent with the ideology held by France’s intellectual elite since the late nineteenthcentury. Algeria was the centrepiece of France’s self-styled mission civilisatrice, a vast
laboratory for the dreams of economic development, agricultural progress and social
experimentation that was designed to enhance national stature as France’s influence
spread in Africa and beyond. In times of national self-doubt, such as the transition from
the Bourbon Restoration to the proto-liberal democracy of the July Monarchy that
immediately followed the 1830 conquest of an Algeria under Ottoman influence, or as in
1954-56 on the heels of stinging defeat in Indochina, the French military historian
Jacques Frémeaux has observed that l’Algérie Française served as a medium of national
affirmation,
…le discours sur la nécessité de l’Algérie pour la grandeur de la France revient
comme un appel des formules utilisées au moment de la conquête.
Faut-il s’étonner de cette convergence ? En 1956 comme en 1830, le
sentiment du danger de dégradation des positions internationales de la France est
très présent… Ainsi, des régimes séparés par plus d’un siècle, et par l’abime des
idées et des événements, se trouvent d’accord pour penser que, « on ne renonce
pas à l’Algérie ! Ce n’est pas ni honorable, ni possible! »47
Soustelle’s allegiance to l’Algérie française was thoroughly consistent with a long
tradition of French liberalism rooted in governmental secularism, religious freedom, the
sanctity of private property and public education. Soustelle’s imperial formation can be
linked to the liberalism of the nineteenth-century philosopher and politician Alexis de
Tocqueville. Tocqueville, renowned for his works on the United States and his revisionist
views of the French revolution, spent much of his career as a thinker and man of action
concerned with Algeria. Tocqueville was an unrepentant advocate of the French conquest
and occupation of Algeria that began in 1830. Further, despite his critique of American
47
Jacques Frémeaux, France Et l'Algérie En Guerre 1830-1870, 1954-1962. (Paris: CFHM, Commission
française d'histoire militaire Institut de Stratégie Comparée Economica, 2002), 48-49.
143
treatment of its Indigenous population, Tocqueville’s views on how best to deal with
Algerian Indigenous peoples were often brutal.48
Alexis de Tocqueville visited Algeria twice. He led a parliamentary board of
inquiry into settlement there. He wrote widely on the matter of French expansion in
Algeria as both an active politician and political theorist. In correspondence with his
friend, the British liberal political theorist John Stuart Mill, Tocqueville promoted the
French presence in Algeria and expressed admiration of what he perceived as British
success in India.49 Like his friend and peer J.S. Mills, who tolerated violations of human
rights in India that he would otherwise deem universal for civilized male human beings,
Tocqueville was often unsparing in his militancy towards any Indigenous intransigence to
France’s mission civilisatrice in Algeria,
…j’ai souvent entendu en France des hommes que je respecte, mais que je
n’approuve pas, trouver mauvais qu’on brûlât les moissons, qu’on vidât les silos
et enfin qu’on s’emparât des hommes sans armes, des femmes et des enfants.
Ce sont là, suivant moi, des nécessités fâcheuses, mais auxquelles tout people qui
vaudra faire la guerre aux Arabes sera obligé de sa soumettre.50
Tocqueville shared a common French misconception. There were very few “Arabs”
among the native population of Algeria. Most of the non-European population descended
from various Berber tribes that inhabited the coastal regions and mountains of the Aurès
and Kabylian regions. Romans, Islamic armies from the Persian Gulf and Otomans had
mixed with the local population for centuries upon century prior to the French conquest
of 1830. By that point, most of that population was Islamic, but more often than not
48
See Jennifer Pitts, “Empire and Democracy: Tocqueville and the Algeria Question” The Journal of
Political Philosophy (Vol. 8, Number 3, 2000), 299,301; Pitts, A Turn to Empire : The Rise of Imperial
Liberalism in Britain and France (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Unversity Press, 2005), 204-26.
49
Pitts, “Tocqueville and the Algeria Question,” 295-318); Pitts, A Turn to Empire, 2-6, 209, 222-4, 230,
233, 237; Tzvetan Todorov, Nous et les autres – La réflexion française sure la diversité humaine (Paris :
Editions du Seuil, 1989), 262-79; Mehta, ”Liberal Strategies”, 75-7.
50
Alexis de Tocqueville, “Travail sur L’Algérie 1841,” in Tocqueville sur l’Algérie, Présentation par
Seloua Luste Boulbina, (Paris: Flammarion, 2003), 112.
144
distinctly non-Arab. In fact, in the mountainous regions that would prove to be breeding
grounds for young men taking up arms against the French by 1956, many people spoke
languages other than Arabic and many practised local religions.51 Similarly, the Canadian
Indian Department in which Duncan Campbell Scott served often arrogated the right to
manage the affairs of Indigenous groups of whose specific history the Department was
ignorant.
In tactical matters, Tocqueville espoused a two-pronged approach to ‘civilizing’
Algerians,
Il y a deux moyens, d’amener chez les Arabes le schisme dont nous devons
profiter :
On peut gagner quelques-uns des principaux par des promesses ou des
largesses.
On peut dégoûter et lasser les tribus par la guerre.
Je n’hésite pas à dire que ces deux moyens peuvent et doivent être
employés simultanément et que le moment d’y renoncer n’est pas venu.52
Thus Tocqueville transparently advocated a dual of strategy of reform and repression of
dissent that was applied from time to time by many subsequent French liberals in Algeria,
including Soustelle.
Within a few months of his arrival, with l’Algérie française veering toward a full
out civil war, Soustelle vigorously embraced an approach similar to that Tocqueville
espoused 120 years earlier. Soustelle demanded more troops and advocated ramping up
the military campaign against the FLN. Simultaneously, Soustelle engaged in soft,
personal style diplomacy. Soustelle began regularly meeting local political and religious
leaders in the urban slums and remote villages of Algeria as soon as he arrived in Algiers.
Germaine Tillion, « L’Algérie en 1956,” in L’Afrique bascule vers l’avenir (Paris: Editions Tirésias –
Michel Reynaud, 1999), 67-74. Originally published in pamphlet form Tillion, L'Algérie En 1957 (Paris:
Association nationale des anciennes déportées et internées de la résistance, 1957) MqB.
52
Tocqueville, “Travail sur L’Algérie 1841”, 74.
51
145
To his dying day, Soustelle would argue that it was in such meetings he was hearing there
the real voice of Algeria which, according to him, was overwhelmed by FLN firepower
and terror.53 In 1973, he bitterly denounced the ‘benefits’ of decolonization for Algeria in
an “open letter to the victims of decolonization”,
L’Algérie ayant été « décolonisée » je désire savoir si l’Algérien « moyen »,
l’homme de la rue à la ville, le fellah dans le bled, a gagné en bien-être, en
dignité, en liberté, en culture, en sécurité depuis qu’il a été soustrait au joug du
colonialisme.54
As in many facets of his Algerian tenure, Soustelle’s consultative approach,
whatever its inspiration, was contradicted by other aspects of French policy. Soustelle
also oversaw the establishment of euphemistically named camps d’hébergement designed
to separate those Algerians advocating revolt from the general population.55 Of course, in
other situations intellectuals such as Soustelle would call such installations concentration
camps. Chapter 6 returns to the question of these maps more extensively.
Like Tocqueville, Soustelle imagined Algeria as a place to re-assert French
prestige and restore tarnished national dignity. Tocqueville viewed French Algerian
colonialism as an antidote to national political decadence. He was unsure whether postrevolutionary France could ever build the sustainable liberal, democratic institutions that
he believed were rooted in British and American political culture. Intellectual historian
Jennifer Pitts argues that Tocqueville saw the agricultural and eventual industrial
development and human settlement of Algeria as the sort of grand project that could
53
BNF Mitterand De coté de chez Fred Feature interview in two parts with Jacques Soustelle, broadcast on
French national télévision, 1989. In audio-visual subject headings for Jacques Soustelle and/or journalist
Frédéric Mitterand
54
Jacques Soustelle. Lettre ouverte aux victimes de la décolonisation (Paris: Éditions Albin Michel, 1973),
123.
55
AOM 11CAB/38 Instructions April 4, 1955; minutes of meeting “TRES SECRET,” État Major Mixte
June 29, 1955.
146
unify the French and help reclaim national prestige after decades of post-revolutionary
chaos and political intrigue,
To build a cohesive, stable, and liberal domestic political order after the collapse
of the ancient régime, revolutionary upheaval, and continuing political turmoil
was Tocqueville’s appointed task as a political thinker and actor. The notion of a
proud French presence in Algeria, a vibrant and glorious new America filled with
prosperous farms and engaged settler-civilians, played an important if too often
overlooked part in Tocqueville’s nation-building project.56
Tzvetan Todorov argues that for liberal theorists such as Tocqueville the conquest of
Algeria was a logical necessity born out of economic and strategic interests,
La politique n’est pas la morale: c’est la leçon qu’on peut tirer de la juxtapositions
des divers écrits de Tocqueville. La morale doit être universelle; la politique ne
saurait l’etre.57
Unlike Pitts and Mehta, Todorov believes that Tocqueville’s recommended path of action
in Algeria contradicts his philosophy. Pitts and Mehta would agree that Tocqueville was
never sincerely universalist, and that his political ideology depends on a hierarchy in
which full democratic and human rights are reserved for a self appointed group of
‘civilized’ men.58 Conversely, Todorov posits that Tocqueville’s politics trumped his
universalist liberal theory on the ground in Algeria. Simply put, in his writings about
America and the French Revolution, Tocqueville was a universal humanist; as a political
animal concerned with French prestige over Algeria, he was a nationalist. In the 1830s,
France was in a state of protracted political upheaval since the Revolution; Tocqueville
imagined Algeria as an antidote to quell what he regarded as France’s predilection for
Pitts, “Tocqueville and the Algeria Question”, 316. See also Olivier Le Cour Grandmaison, Coloniser
Exterminer Sur la guerre de l’État colonial (Paris: Fayard, 2005), 7-11.
57
Todorov, Nous et les autres, 279
58
Pitts, “Tocqueville and the Algeria Question,” 303-4, 314-7; Pitts, Turn to Empire, 9, 248; Mehta,
“Liberal Strategies “, 67-8, 75-8.
56
147
political disunity through national focus on the great task of settling and civilizing
Algeria.59
In the 1950s, France was adjusting clumsily to a changed world. Having suffered
an ignominious defeat at the hands of German Nazis in 1940, France was liberated as a
crippled middle power at best, finding itself bracketed by two superpowers – an
expanding Soviet bloc to the east and a triumphant America across the Atlantic. In the
immediate aftermath of World War II, intellectuals, including Jacques Soustelle, were
virtually unanimous in regarding France’s continuing presence in Algeria as an essential
means to recover national pride. To many people of Soustelle’s ilk, losing Algeria,
particularly following the defeat at Dien Bien Phu in Indochina, was unthinkable.60 These
impulses were similar to those concerning Algeria in Tocqueville’s day. As we have seen
above, following the collapse of Bonapartism in the early nineteenth century and
subsequent political convulsions, Algeria offered the prospect of renewal to many French
thinkers across a broad political spectrum. Historians such as Jennifer Pitts assert that the
policies of nineteenth-century French Algeria are fundamental to an understanding of
French liberal intellectualism. For Tocqueville and other nineteenth-century liberals,
Algeria was a proving ground for the French nation, just as it was for those of Soustelle’s
generation. As Pitts explains,
This rather desperate grasp at imperialism at a crucial moment of nation-building
left its mark not only on the French nation – whose subsequent century and more
of colonial rule and fight against decolonization would be more violent than
Britain’s – but on French liberalism as well. The dominant stand of liberalism that
was forged during this period was to be exclusionary and nationalist; and it would
sit uneasily with the Revolution’s apparent legacy of universal human equality
and liberty.61
Pitts, “Tocqueville and the Algeria Question,” 308-9, 311.
Girardet, L’Idée coloniale, 343-7.
61
Pitts, Turn to Empire, 300
59
60
148
Until the outbreak of war in Algeria in the mid 1950s French liberals were
overwhelmingly unified in the belief that France could advance the democratic values of
its Revolution and colonize at the same time. As the historian of French intellectualism
James Le Sueur has argued, this surprising unity stemmed from the belief that French
ideals enshrined in the Declaration of the Rights of Man could and should be exported,
…one idea in which many French intellectuals continued to believe explicitly or
implicitly was French universalism. The notion of French universalism also
formed the bedrock of French colonial policy, especially in Algeria. It was this
universalism (a product of the French Revolution and the Enlightenment),
ironically, that, according to historians, allowed many intellectuals to waver
uncomfortably on the Algerian question because French colonialism in Algeria
simultaneously contradicted and affirmed universalist intentions and ideas.62
This enthusiasm for the universal application of Revolutionary ideals was seized
upon by stern, more conservative coalition of advocates of expansionism abroad often
referred to as “le parti coloniale”, a broad grouping of academics, business people,
journalists, politicians and others, who forced the issue to build a consensus that
splintered following Dien Bien Phu and the outbreak of war in Algeria. The high stakes
of this sudden fracture in a consensus around colonialism has been ably described by Le
Sueur,
For over a hundred years French colonial theorists had applied enormous pressure
on the national community to affirm the civilizing mission and to ensure that
colonialism and universalism would be the measure of French national eminence.
This, of course, would have grave consequences during the era of decolonization.63
Arguments over decolonization would end friendships, sully careers and engage virtually
the entire cast of French intellectuals of the 1950s – Raymond Aron, Simone de Beauvoir
and Jean-Paul Sartre were among the prominent intellectuals that rallied to the FLN
62
63
Le Sueur, “Decolonizing,” 105.
Ibid, 106.
149
cause.64 As the war in Algeria grew bloodier and more frightening and as newspapers
such as le Monde and magazines like L’Express and Combat began to reveal the brutality
of French military actions, many intellectuals shifted towards the FLN which was
suddenly deemed by many elements of the social democratic left as the valid spearhead
of decolonization. This shift represented a fundamental rupture of a consensus that had
largely prevailed for 125 years. From a belief that revolutionary ideals and colonization
could co-exist, the general trend of French intellectualism after 1955 was to insist on
decolonization and the empowerment of independence movements in Algeria and
elsewhere that were often in conflict with French settler populations and the military. As
Le Sueur has observed, this placed Jacques Soustelle at the centre of a virulent debate
with grave personal consequences for many,
While French and Algerian intellectuals rethought the question of national and
personal identity, tried to comprehend the loss of French universalism, and
attempted to understand the national significance of the demise of French power
overseas, the French-Algerian war also presented them with a unique opportunity
to re-assert intellectual legitimacy… Violence, identity and the question of
intellectual legitimacy, …, forced intellectuals during the war to make a choice:
either situate their privileged status as intellectuals within the new France, the
post-colonial France, or attach their status as intellectuals to an empire in peril.
Very few intellectuals (Jacques Soustelle is among the important exceptions)
opted for the latter. 65
Soustelle was certainly among the most important exceptions, but he was not alone.
Soustelle’s assessment, at least until approximately 1958, was actually not entirely
removed from that of Albert Camus who never reconciled himself to Algerian
independence.66 Soustelle was also backed by his mentor and one-time doctoral
64
Ibid.
Ibid.
66
Albert Camus, Actuelles III Chroniques Algériennes 1939-1958 (Paris: Gallimard, 1958), 11-25.
65
150
supervisor Paul Rivet who opposed Algerian independence until his death.67 Further, the
highly respected Germane Tillion served in Soustelle’s cabinet. She only grudgingly
accepted the inevitability of Algerian independence near the war’s end.
Jacques Soustelle carried the baggage of venerable French policies and ideology
with him to Algiers in January 1955. Similarly, Duncan Campbell Scott was not a rogue
exponent of a vicious, mean-spirited policy of his own device. Scott was a loyal civil
servant carefully implementing policies which sprang from profound British imperial
roots - the intellectual foundation of policies Duncan Campbell Scott was expected to
implement as Deputy Superintendant General of Indian Affairs. Certain foundational
works illustrate the ideological sources and intellectual underpinning of Scott’s thinking
about Indigenous people in Canada.
Imperial Humanism versus Aggressive Civilization
In 1837 Herman Merivale was named professor of political economy at Oxford
University. Over the next five years, Merivale delivered a series on lectures on Britain’s
colonial possessions. A number of leading historians on Aboriginal-settler relations in
Canada identify Merivale’s lectures as critical underpinnings to the Native policy that
Canada would inherit in 1867.68 Merivale was a proponent of civilization, the term used
for a cluster of educational and missionary policies that would ideally, after a
considerable passage of time, lead Indigenous people to enjoy full responsibilities as
British subjects. He rejected the widely held belief that Natives in places like Canada
were simply doomed to extinction. He challenged Britain’s leaders to make the effort
67
Christine Laurière, Paul Rivet Le Savant Et Le Politique (Paris: Publications Scientifiques du Muséum
national d'Histoire naturelle, 2008), 617-8.
68
Dickason, Canada’s First Nations, 248, 264-5; Harris, Making Native Space, 6-9, 13-4; McNab,
“Merivale and the Native Question,” 365-9.
151
and spend the money to protect Indigenous populations and to ease their passage to
civilized status. Merivale argued that foresight and proper colonial management of the
native question could obviate widespread wrongs,
The history of the European settlements in America, Africa and Australia, presents
everywhere the same general features – a wide and sweeping destruction of native
races by the uncontrolled violence of individuals, if not of colonial authorities,
followed by tardy attempts to repair the acknowledged crime.69
Merivale visited Canada on one occasion. Although he was a champion of civilization,
Merivale was also a proponent of the removal of Natives from the path of settler
colonization. His writings reveal the tension between removal and civilization that
bedevilled Canadian Indian policy for the century following the publication of his
lectures in 1861. He envisioned a moving reserve system at the edge of a transitory
frontier that would allow Indigenous people to both gradually adjust to European
progress and preserve those of their ways of life that would still be of use in a modern
nation. Merivale believed that very virtues he saw among the Indigenous peoples of
Canada would make them difficult subjects for such a programme,
The North American Indians are well known to us by description; the favourite
study alike of philosophy and romance for these two centuries, their character
fixed in our minds as almost the type of that of men in a savage condition; yet they
have many peculiar features. They seem possessed of higher moral elevation than
any other uncivilized race of mankind, with less natural readiness and ingenuity
than some but greater depth and force of character; more native generosity of
spirit, and manliness of disposition; more of the religious element; and yet, on the
other hand, if not with less capacity for improvement, certainly less readiness to
receive it; a more thorough wildness of temperament; less
curiosity; inferior excitability; greater reluctance to associate with civilized men; a
more ungovernable impatience of control. And their primitive condition of
hunters, and aversion from every other, greatly increases the difficulty of
including them in the arrangements of regular community.70
69
70
Merivale, Lectures, 490.
Ibid, 493.
152
In Merivale’s assessment it was not merely the “primitive condition” of Aboriginal people
in British North America that would slow the pace of civilisation. Merivale often took a
dim view of the activities of colonial authorities responsible for Indigenous affairs. He was
very sceptical of the conduct of those in Upper Canada (now Ontario) who were more
determined to promote settlement and clearing of land than protecting Aboriginal
interests.71 That approach reached its apogee in 1835-6 under the administration of
Governor Frances Bond Head who recommended the mass migration of Indians in the
Great Lakes region of Upper Canada to Manitoulin Island.72 That policy was ultimately
rejected by the Colonial Office in London. Bond Head’s policy is seen by some scholars
as a failed attempt at a ‘homelands’ policy utilized by British colonists in the Queen
Adelaide Province area of the Cape Colony which would become known as Ciskei under
an apartheid regime in South Africa twentieth century.73 As Merivale compared colonial
administrations in New Zealand, the Cape, Australia and British North America, he found
particularly worrisome conditions in the latter where Bond Head’s legacy and other
wrong-footed tactics had complicated matters,
In Canada, there is a considerable and expensive department, with superintendents,
secretaries, and interpreters; but the mismanagement of the affairs of that colony,
as regards the natives, seems to have rendered them of little service, except to
superintend the mischievous practice of the annual delivery of presents.74
In the view of Merivale, who would become Under Secretary of State for Colonies in
1847, it was Britain’s imperial moral responsibility to safeguard aboriginal interests in
places like Canada where colonial governments were primarily interested in rapid
71
Ibid.
Milloy, “Era,” 177-92; Titley, Narrow Vision, 3.
73
Milloy, “Era,” 192-5.
74
Merivale, Lectures, 494.
72
153
settlement, the expansion of frontiers and the development of natural resources. Following
the conquest of New France, Britain established the office of the Deputy Superintendant
General of Indian Affairs for Quebec and Acadia; which would become the Indian
Department after 1867.75 Merivale believed that the department was tainted by a familiar
colonial problem: settler governments tended to run rough-shod over the intent of the
Royal Proclamation of 1763 which codified King George III’s policy effort to achieve
harmony between settlers and Indian peoples. Humanistic imperial measures
were defeated by when local settler interests expressed through proto-democratic political
systems and under the influence of land developers and railway promoters. As Merivale
saw the situation,
When men superior in intelligence and in power are brought into contact with their
feebler brethren, when they are turned loose among them without the possibility of
a complete, efficient, and above all, a disinterested control, to expect that will not
grossly abuse their power, is to imagine that the evil principle of human nature will
be rendered harmless by diminishing restraints and an extended sphere of action.76
Herman Merivale articulated a humanist strain of British imperial theory. In the
tradition of Adam Smith, who was profoundly sceptical of imperialism, Merivale
believed that British colonial policy created conditions of abuse; in a discussion of
Smith’s cautionary imperial analysis, Merivale claimed, “he (Smith) can only be shown
to have been wrong where he hesitated to push his own views far enough…”77 That is not
to suggest that Merivale was opposed to settler colonialism. On the contrary, he believed
that the highest Christian ideals must be brought to bear in colonial settings to gradually
“amalgamate” Indigenous peoples into the colonial population,
Titley, Narrow Vision, 1-9; Milloy, “Era,” 324-32.
Merivale, Lectures, 26-27.
77
Ibid, 73-74.
75
76
154
we must view, in the occupation of their country by the Whites, not the necessary
cause of their destruction, but the only possible means of rescuing them from it.
We are not then their predestined murderers, but called to assume the station of
their preservers. If we neglect the call, we do so in defiance of the express and
intelligible indications afforded us by Providence.78
Pitted against men of “superior intelligence”, Indigenous populations had to be protected
and nurtured to a point of “amalgamation… the only possible Euthanasia of savage
communities.”79 Merivale grandly prescribed a process in which Canadian Natives could
be protected in the short-to-medium term on lands reserved for them at the edge of
settlement. He suggested that such reserves could be moved along with the frontier until
economic opportunity, inter-marriage and the migration of some fitting individuals to
settled areas would achieve the ultimate goal of Merivale’s sought after “amalgamation”.80
In general terms, these would remain planks of Canada’s Indian
policy for the first century of its national existence. “Amalgamation” would appear to
amount to a complete, but gradual, assimilation. Post-Confederation Canada opted for a
different ideology: a ramped up variant of administration of Indigenous peoples known as
‘aggressive civilisation’, a draconian set of policies developed in the United States during
the administration of President Ulysses S. Grant, the famed civil war military leader and
renowned ‘Indian fighter’.81 One the principal Canadian proponents of aggressive
civilisation was Nicholas Flood Davin – its primary bureaucratic advocate in the critical
period of 1913 to 1932 was Duncan Campbell Scott.
Davin was a journalist and politician who had emigrated from Ireland to Canada
in 1872. He was an active supporter of Prime Minister John A. Macdonald. In 1879,
78
Ibid, 549.
Ibid, 511-512.
80
Ibid.
81
Titley, Narrow Vision, 76-7.
79
155
Macdonald sent Davin on a one-man fact finding mission to the United Sates to
investigate the “industrial schools” which the administration of President Ulysses S.
Grant had established as part of its aggressive civilisation programme. As the American
west “closed” in 1869, the Grant administration tackled the matter of education for newly
‘conquered’ tribes with ideological fervour. Davin reported,
The experience of the United States is the same as our own as far as the adult
Indian is concerned. Little can be done with him. He can be taught to do a little at
farming, and at stock-raising, and to dress in a more civilized manner, but that is
all. The child again, who goes to a day school learns little, and what little he learns
is soon forgotten, while his tastes are fashioned at home, and his inherited aversion
to toil is in no way combated.82
The desire of the American government to hasten the process of ‘aggressive civilisation’
resulted in the establishment of industrial schools in the American west as well as in
places like New Carlisle, Pennsylvania where Indian children from the west were
subjected to particularly rigorous tutelage. Nicholas Flood Davin arrived at a few
fundamental convictions as a result of his tour. He agreed with the educational pioneers
of American Indian education that separating children from their parents was crucial. Day
schools should be supplanted by industrial boarding schools “because the influence of the
wigwam was stronger than the influence of the school.”83 Davin was particularly
impressed by his meetings at the Indian Department in Washington with representatives
of schools in the American west where Indigenous peoples who had been removed from
the south-east were achieving success. As Davin understood things, the “civilized”
members of the Creek, Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw and Seminole nations whose
Nicholas Flood Davin, “Report on Industrial Schools for Indians and Half-Breeds” submitted to the
government of Canada, Ottawa, March 14, 1879. LAC, Microfilm reel C-1518.
83
Ibid, 1.
82
156
children were benefiting from industrial schooling in the “Indian Territory” of presentday Oklahoma, made an effective case,
All the members of the civilized tribes declared their belief that the chief thing to
in dealing with the less civilized or wholly barbarous tribes, was to separate the
children from the parents. As I have said, the Indian Department in Washington,
have not much hope in regard to the adult Indians. But sanguine anticipations are
cherished respecting the children. The five nations are themselves a proof there’s
a certain degree of civilization within the reach of the red man while illustrating
his deficiencies. 84
Davin was also convinced that Christian religion and its churches had vital,
continuing roles to play in Indian education. As a liberal he saw a place for various
Christian denominations in the effort, but the essentials are clear,
The importance of denominational schools at the outset for Indians must be
obvious… A civilized sceptic, breathing though he does, an atmosphere charged
with Christian ideas, and getting strength unconsciously therefrom, is
nevertheless, unless in the instance of rare intellectual vigour, apt to be a man
without ethical backbone. But a savage sceptic would be open to civilizing
influences and moral conduct only through the control of desires, which, in the
midst of enlightenment, constantly break out into the worst features of
barbarism.85
Davin’s report proceeds from his American findings to an analysis of challenges
confronting the government of Canada in the North-West. He had travelled to Winnipeg
where he met with religious leaders concerned with Indian education. Davin conducted
his research after the first uprising led by Métis Louis Riel in Red River in 1869-70. In
that respect, there is a strategic aspect to Davin’s policy prescription. He regarded
education as part of an overall Canadian imperative to settle and pacify the west,
Among the Indians there is some discontent, but as a rule it amounts to no more
than the chronic querulousness of the Indian character, and his uneasiness about
food at this time of year will unfortunately leave no trace in his improvident mind
when spring opens and fish are plentiful. The exceptions are furnished by one or
two chiefs whose bands are starving, that is in the Indian sense of the word,
84
85
Ibid, 7.
Ibid, 14-15.
157
without a certain prospect of food in the future… No race of men can be suddenly
turned from one set of pursuits to another set of a wholly different nature without
great attendant distress. But, suddenly, to make men long accustomed to a wild
unsettled life, with its freedom from restraint, its excitement and charm, take to
the colourless monotony of daily toil, the reward of which is prospective, is
impossible.86
Davin expressed concern that Canada had unwisely raised expectations in its early prairie
Indian treaties. While he regarded education for Indigenous people as a “sacred duty”, he
felt the government was unwise in making specific treaty promises in this regard. Having
done so, the government was inviting, according to Davin, a surfeit of Indian
participation in the process,
It might have been easily realized, (it is at least thinkable), that one of the results
would be to make the Chiefs believe they had some right to a voice regarding the
character and management of the schools, as well as regarding an initiatory step
of their establishment.87
The Davin Report on Industrial Schools was a blueprint for the exclusion of
Canadian Indian parents from the development of educational programs and schools for
their own children. It was submitted in 1879, the same year that Duncan Campbell Scott
was hired by the Indian Department. Canadian historians such as John S. Milloy and
James R. Miller have emphasized the ideological and tactical weight of Davin’s report in
the development of the Department’s educational policy.88 Indeed, Davin recommended
the opening of industrial schools, which came to be known in the twentieth century as
Indian residential schools. His advice regarding the involvement of the Christian
86
Ibid, 9.
Ibid, 11.
88
J. R. Miller, Shingwauk's Vision: A History of Native Residential Schools (Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 1996), 101-3; John Sheridan Milloy, A National Crime: The Canadian Government and the
Residential School System, 1879-1986 (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 1999), xiv-xv, 7-8, 31-32;
Maggie. Siggins, Bitter Embrace: White Society's Assault on the Woodland Cree (Toronto: McClelland &
Stewart, 2005), 145-7.
87
158
churches was implemented: Anglicans, Catholics and Methodists were prominently
involved in the running of schools.89
By 1909, Duncan Campbell Scott was the senior civil servant in charge of Indian
education. In 1913, Scott was promoted to the position of Deputy Superintendant General
of Indian Affairs.90 Throughout his career, Scott championed Indian education as a means
to achieve the rapid assimilation of Indian children. As we shall see, by the 1920s Scott
personally argued to members of parliament that the Department needed enhanced
powers to force Indian parents to send their children to such schools.91 Throughout the
residential school system, policies such as the suppression of Indigenous languages and
spirituality and the systemic demeaning of Indian parenthood, which were hallmarks of the
ideology of American “aggressive civilization” as observed by Nicholas Flood Davin,
were adopted and honed on the Canadian prairies under the supervision of Duncan
Campbell Scott.92
It is possible to consider the ideology that drove Canadian Indian policy in the
immediate post-confederation period on a spectrum. At one end, there existed a
humanist, civilizing approach, as expressed in the writings of Herman Merivale. This
approach was imbued with Christian obligation and underscored by an admiring, very
imperfect, yet relatively positive, appreciation of Indigenous ways of life. At the other
end of the spectrum resided a sterner settler ideology more contemptuous of Indigenous
culture and further complicated by the belief that aboriginal people were doomed to die
off or be entirely absorbed by an exponentially expanding settler civilization. Colonial
89
Milloy, National Crime, 31-2; Titley, Narrow Vision, 76-7.
Titley, Narrow Vision, 94-109.
91
Duncan Campbell Scott briefing notes regarding compulsory education for appearance at Parliamentary
Committee, 1920. LAC/BAC RG10 Vol 6810, file 470-2-3 Pt.7.
92
Miller, Shingwauk's Vision; Milloy, National Crime, 33, 70, 102-3; Titley, Narrow Vision, 76-93.
90
159
governors such as Francis Bond Head and post-confederation senior administrators of
Indian policy such as Duncan Campbell Scott were principal exponents of such a point of
view.93
Jacques Soustelle and the Burden of Empire
The central argument among ‘civilizers’ in Canadian Indian policy in the crucial
transitory hand-off from British colonial to federal Canadian rule was between advocates
of an aggressive approach seeking to swiftly terminate Indian identity within the new
nation by means of coercion and those that saw the reserve system and education as a
means to facilitate a gradual Indian absorption or integration into Canadian life. Similarly
French intellectual history in regards to imperialism can be usefully analyzed in
contemplation of the spaces between a humanistic approach wary of betraying the ideals
of republicanism stemming from the French Revolution and an activist, muscular liberal
imperialism in the tradition of Alexis de Tocqueville. The tradition of encyclopédistes
like Denis Diderot and the post revolutionary political philosopher Benjamin Constant
established that the spirit of 1789 meant Republican France should be a non-imperial
power.94 This impulse was shredded by Naploeon’s armies and tattered further at the
very end of the Bourbon restoration with the conquest of Algeria in 1830. The republican
leaning July Monarchy established by Louis-Philippe immediately following the fall of
the Bourbon restoration and the wresting of Algeria from Ottoman influence, did not
abandon Algeria. This set the stage for continued control of Algeria for the next 130
years under all stripes of French governments whether liberal, quasi-fascist or Gaullist.
Milloy, “Era,” 175-92; D. M. R. Bentley, "Shadows in the Soul: Racial Haunting in the Poetry of
Duncan Campbell Scott." University of Toronto Quarterly 75, no. Number 2, Spring 2006, 754-6.
94
Pitts, “Tocqueville and the Algeria Question,” 295-8.
93
160
An intellectual virage from unrepentant settler colonialism in Algeria under
metropolitan control occurred during Louis-Napoloén’s régime in the Second Empire,
1852-1870. Louis-Napoléon spoke of an ‘Arab Kingdom’ in an idealized vision of
Indigenous-Franco cooperation in Algeria.95 Louis-Napoléon was prepared, in theory at
least, to countenance Indigenous collective property and agricultural practices that flew in
the face of liberal beliefs regarding private property. He was opposed by settler interests
in Algeria and the policies were never activated in a meaningful way.96
Leading scholars of l’Algérie française such as Charles-Robert Ageron, have
observed that following the establishment of the Third Republic in 1870, a liberal
consensus, built in part on the intellectual shoulders of men like Alexis de Tocqueville,
emerged in which France’s revolutionary, republican legacy demanded a mission
civilisatrice as French political influence, military and economic interests extended into
parts of Africa and Asia,
Aux incertitudes des régimes précédents concernant le destin de l'Algérie
succéda sous la IIIe République une politique continue fermement appliqué, qui
donne tout son sens à la période proprement coloniale de l'histoire de
l'Algérie française. Par cette assimilation administrative et politique qui
intégrait définitivement le pays au sein de la République une et indivisible,
on entendait rejeter toute éventualité du retour en arrière, toute possibilité
du « Royaume Arabe », de protectorat ou de comptoirs coloniaux.97
Tocqueville’s thinking and actions in Algeria foreshadow similar conundrums in
the intellectual production and political actions among his ideological spawn such as
95
Julien, Charles-André, Histoire De l'Algérie Contemporaine: La Conquête Et Les
Débuts De La Colonisation (1827-1871) (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1964), 425-6; CharlesRobert de Ageron, Histoire de l'Algérie contemporaine Tome II : De l'insurrection de 1871 au
déclenchement de la la guerre de libération 1954 (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1979), 32-9;
Herbert Ingram Priestley, France Overseas: A Study of Modern Imperialism (New York: Octagon Books,
1966 originally published 1938), 76-86; Bouche, Colonisation Francaise, 112-3.
96
Lustick, State-Building Failure, 51-6.
97
Ageron, Histoire de l'Algérie, 9.
161
Jacques Soustelle. As an authority on Mexican civilizations, Soustelle thought long and
hard, and wrote extensively, about the development and eclipse of empires. Immediately
prior to his departure for Algeria in the winter of 1955, Soustelle completed La Vie
quotidienne des aztèques. In this work, Soustelle situated Aztec civilization in the context
of the history of empires,
Sans doute il n’est pas inexacte d’interpréter l’histoire de Tenochtitlan depuis
1325 jusqu'à 1519 comme celle d’un état impérialiste qui poursuit sans répit son
expansion par la conquête.98
One of Soustelle’s principal works, La Vie quotidienne des aztèques, is a dense, thickly
researched, but eminently readable examination of what Soustelle unhesitatingly
identified as one of humanity’s greatest accomplishments, the short-lived (1325-1521)
Aztec empire,
Mexico était la jeune capitale d’une société en pleine mutation, d’une civilisation
en plein essor, d’un empire encore en formation. Les Aztèques n’avaient pas
atteint leur zénith : c’est a peine si leur astre avait franchi les premiers degrés de
sa course. Il ne faut jamais oublier que cette ville était détruite par l’étranger avant
d’avoir atteint son deuxième centenaire, et qu’en réalité son ascension datait du
temps d’Itzcoatl, moins d’un siècle avant l’invasion.99
A subsequent chapter deals at length with Soustelle’s specific application of
Mexican revolutionary indigenismo in Algeria. Soustelle’s understanding of imperial
behaviour and devoir was influenced by his study of ancient Mexican civilizations.
Soustelle’s thinking about imperial systems was rooted intellectually in a classic liberal
formation at one of Europe’s elite universities and his own profound archaeological,
ethnological, historical and linguistic study of Mexico. Crucial to his analysis of the
Aztec ascendancy was that empire’s ability to absorb and adapt to new cultures as the
98
Jacques Soustelle, La vie quotidienne des Aztèques à la veille de la conquête espagnole (Paris: Librairie
Hachette, 1955), 128.
99
Soustelle, vie quotidienne, 59.
162
Aztec empire extended its military and trade based power in Mesoamerica. To Soustelle’s
way of thinking, as an imperial power, the Aztecs absorbed and integrated, rather than
annihilated, its enemies. As the Aztecs expanded their influence to the south and west of
their capital Tenochtitlan (now Mexico City), short military campaigns were followed by
the accommodation of networks of commerce and religion. Also, Aztec religion was
mutable – each region under its influence proffered gods and religious customs that were
incorporated into Aztec cosmology. In this regard, as far as Soustelle was concerned, the
Aztecs were different than their European conquerors. In Soustelle’s telling, the Aztecs’
tendency to incorporate contributed tragically to their demise at the hands of the Spaniards,
Telle fut la base du grand malentendu qui opposa les Mexicains aux
Espagnols : les uns, adorateurs de dieux multiples, et prêts a recevoir parmi les
leurs ceux que les nouveaux venus apportaient; les autres, sectateurs d’une
religion exclusive qui ne pouvait élever ses églises que sur les ruines des temples
anciens.100
Soustelle would not forget the wisdom of the albeit short-lived Aztec empire. On
his arrival in Algeria as Governor General, Soustelle immediately spoke of his plan for
Algeria as one of ‘integration’. He demanded urgency in a comprehensive effort to
integrate Algeria and its Moslem majority into French society and politics. Seemingly
ignoring the scars of more than a century of well-documented settler brutality and the
systemic abrogration of liberal universalism that had defined French rule for over a
century, Soustelle argued that Moslems must soon join a single legislative body and that
massive investments from la métropole in education, health and social services would
lead to an integration of Arabs, Berbers and European Algerians. His plan Soustelle
called for equal respect for Christian, Jewish and Moslem faiths. In his mind, integration
100
Soustelle, vie quotidienne, 143.
163
did not mean assimilation.101 These ideas flowed logically from Soustelle’s
understanding of the world as an authority of both ancient and revolutionary Mexico. It
may not be stretching the point to suggest that Soustelle regarded the Aztecs as mentors
in nurturing his understanding of intégration.
As Governor General of Algeria, Soustelle hoped to convince a sceptical pied noir
population that its future lay in a melding with a majority Moslem society.102 In the long
run, Soustelle imagined a Euro-Arab population in which French Algerians of all faiths
would fully participate in French republicanism.103 But Soustelle arrived at a point where
125 years of French rule had left scorched earth rather than fertile ground for such an
accommodation. He simply failed to adequately factor in the legacy of French brutality in
Algeria. In this regard, Soustelle revealed a snaïve streak that perhaps betrayed his
primarily academic, theoretical background. He arrived in Algeria at the very moment the
FLN had revealed itself an implacable foe of French rule tout court. As he soon
discovered, his responsibilities as Governor General grew more militaristic in nature with
every passing week of his doomed administration.
In early 1956, Jacques Soustelle left Algeria as Governor General following yet
another change of government in Paris. He wrote immediately of his experience in a
memoir entitled Aimée et souffrante Algérie.104 Over the next three years, Soustelle was
in and out of government, but always actively pursued a vision of integration to save
France’s great national project in Algeria. In 1958, he was one of a handful of political
Ibid; Jacques Soustelle, “Souvenirs, Apocryphes en forme de dialogue avec George Suffert”
unpublished manuscript provided to the author by Bernard Ullmann.
102
Horne, Savage War, 108; Stephen Tyre, "From Algérie Française to France Musulmane: Jacques
Soustelle and the Myths and Realities of ‘Integration’, 1955–1962." French History 20, no. 3 (09, 2006):
276-296.
103
Rudelle, « Témoignages Soustelle, » 282-4.
104
Jacques Soustelle, Aimée et souffrante Algérie (Paris: Plon, 1956).
101
164
and military operatives who brought General Charles de Gaulle out of retirement to
resume leadership of France in what was effectively a bloodless coup d’état.105 Soustelle
believed that had received a personal guarantee from de Gaulle that he would win the war
and then save l’Algérie française through social and political reforms. Soustelle’s hopes
were dashed two years later when de Gaulle fired him and then announced to the nation
that he would abandon Algeria.106
Jacques Soustelle viewed the abandonment of l’Algérie française as a
fundamental failure of imperial will. In Aimée et souffrante Algérie and in a quick
succession of more polemical works in the 1960s, Soustelle insisted on the moral
obligation of France to all Algerians and on what he regarded as the basic rectitude of la
mission civilisatrice.107 In these works, Soustelle often reached back in history to
compare what he considered de Gaulle’s abandonment of l’Algérie française with
ignominious moments in French imperial history, including the fall of New France after
the defeat of General Montcalm on the Plains of Abraham outside the citadel of Quebec
City in 1759,
Quand la monarchie déjà chancelante dut abandonner ce qu’on appelait les
quelques arpents de neige » du Canada – expression qui rappelle « cette Algérie si
cher » - encore nos armées avaient-elles subi trop de revers pour pouvoir
poursuivre une guerre aussi lointaine…Pour abandonner l’Algérie, il a fallu
déployer dix fois plus d’efforts que pour la sauver ; il a fallu, obstinément, vouloir
la défaite. Le Pouvoir a fabriqué de toutes pièces le Dien-Bien-Phu diplomatique
d’Evian, « bâti » lui-même la F.L.N. comme seul interlocuteur valable et comme
gouvernement de l’Algérie.108
105
Ullmann, mal aimé, 235-40; Slama, déchirure, 94-106; Horne, Savage War, 281, 368-70.
Ulllmann, mal aimé, 295-8.
107
Jacques Soustelle, L'Ésperance trahie, 1958-1961 (Paris: Editions de l'Alma, 1962); Jacques Soustelle,
Sur une nouvelle route (Paris: Éditions du Fuseau, 1964); Jacques Soustelle, La Page n'est pas tournée
(Paris: La Table ronde, 1965).
108
Soustelle, nouvelle route, 33-35.
106
165
Soustelle also drew on his understanding of Mexican empires to caution the West
about the risk of decay and regression in the twentieth century as he furthered his
scholarly output about Mexico under extreme personal circumstances. As he travelled
clandestinely between Italy, Belgium, Switzerland and perhaps, the United States, during
his self-exile from France between 1962 and 1968, Soustelle composed one of his greatest
works as a Mexican specialist. Between the highly polemical rages of the pen aimed at de
Gaulle, Soustelle worked on Les quatre soleils, the book that Soustelle’s
biographer, political journalist Bernard Ullmann considered his masterpiece.109 Les
quatre soleils is a contemplation of the meaning of the rise and fall of civilizations which
employs Aztec and Mayan civilizations as templates in a consideration that draws on
many thinkers including Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Herbert Spencer, Arnold J.
Toynbee and Soustelle’s contemporary Arthur Kroeber.110 Interweaving his recollections
of touring Otomi and Mayan Lacandon territories in the 1930s with an interdisciplinary
analysis of a broad sweep of human civilizations around the globe, Soustelle wondered
about the meaning of the decline of Mayan civilization. As a linguist and ethnographer,
he, like other Lacandon specialists, was convinced that the ‘primitive’ twentieth-century
forest dwellers of southern Mexican selva (rain forest) were the descendants of the very
Maya who had created an elaborate, monumental civilization in Mesoamerica. Soustelle
posed the question: what had happened?
Si les Lacandons nous apparaissent, pour l’essentiel, comme des Maya, lointains
petits-neveux de ceux dont le cerveau et la main nous ont laissé en témoignage de
leurs temps d’incomparables merveilles, alors une conclusion s’impose : il ne sont
pas des primitifs, mais des décadents. Vestiges d’une humanité qui, fut capable,
pendant sept siècles, de s’élever très haut au-dessus d’elle-même, ils sont
109
Ullmann, mal aimé, 359.
Jacques Soustelle, Les quatre soleils (Paris: Librairie Plon, 1967), 79; See A. L. Kroeber, A Roster of
Civilizations and Culture (Chicago: Aldine Pub. Co., 1962).
110
166
retombés au plus bas. Leur histoire nous présente un cas exemplaire de ces
processus de régression dont nos esprits se tiennent pas assez compte, obsédés
qu’ils sont par le mythe du progrès uniforme et continu. Et j’incline à croire que
beaucoup de prétendus « primitifs », loin de représenter les débuts tâtonnants du
notre espèce, figés par quel miracle ? – dans un passé immobile et toujours
semblable à lui-même, sont les témoins d’une histoire qui les a entrainés tout au
long d’une courbe déclinante, les épaves d’un naufrage lointain.111
Soustelle writing ‘on the lam’ in safe houses and public libraries in Brussels and Rome
may have conflated his despair over the loss of l’Algérie française and his deeply felt
liberal aspirations for la mission civilisatrice with a belief that de Gaulle’s shocking
decision to leave Algeria signified the decay of French civilization.112
Like Alexis de Tocqueville, Soustelle was always a French nationalist. Even in a
highly sophisticated and cultured oeuvre such as Les quatre soleils, one detects the
influence of Soustelle’s brooding about what he perceived to be France’s defeat in Algeria
through Soustelle’s insistence on the impermanence and decadence that lurks in every
human civilization. In the nuclear age, Soustelle reminded his readers of Mayan and
Aztec predictions of civilizations ending in cataclysms of fire. In ancient Mexican
cosmology stories of ‘the four suns’ are constant reminders of human fragility in the face
of mercurial and sometimes disdainful gods.113 Soustelle did not believe that western
civilization of the twentieth century was more likely than any other to survive. He
believed that empires had to impose their rule, establish normative relations with their
satellites, and resist aggression from barbarous forces to prevent decay. In this regard, he
believed that he identified the fatal flaw of Aztec civilization: the very willingness to
absorb and accommodate its neighbours helped make the Aztecs quick victims of a
111
Soustelle, quatre soleils, 103-4.
Ullmann, mal aimé, 359-363.
113
Jacques Soustelle, La pensée cosmologique des anciens mexicains (Représentation du monde et de
l’espace) (Paris : Hermann & Cie, 1940), 10; Soustelle, quatre soleils, 120-22.
112
167
Spanish civilization that was forged on conquest and cultural annihilation following the
reconquista that almost immediately preceded the conquest of Mexico.114
Jacques Soustelle was imbued with a sense of imperial obligation. Like many
French intellectuals of his generation, Sosustelle believed that France possessed both the
authority and the duty to lead by example in the developing world. As far as Soustelle
was concerned, this necessary tutelage was disrupted in Algeria by the FLN at the
expense of both the Moslem majority and the multi-denominational European minority.
For Soustelle the most infuriating aspect of this alleged failure was the complicity of
most of his peers – the intellectual leaders of metropolitan France.115 He perceived a
massive trahison de clercs – a betrayal that in Soustelle’s view led logically to the
victimization of Algerian minorities and the subjugation of its majority in a terrorist,
semi-theocratic state led by an anti-democratic post-colonial elite. As he fumed and
plotted, away from France in the years following the Evian Accords between France and
an independent Algeria, Soustelle polished his magisterial work on the history of
civilization and the meaning of empire. Within Les quatre soleils runs a thread of doom
and decay appropriate to the age of nuclear brinkmanship during which Jacques
Soustelle, the frustrated and thwarted authority on Mexico and l’Algérie française,
erstwhile right-hand man of le General de Gaulle, and classically formed liberal
imperialist, wrote,
Nous le savons maintenant : tout soleil est condamné à s’éteindre. Une
civilisation peut succomber sous l’assaut des barbares – les jaguars du premier
univers ; elle peut sombrer dans l’impuissance et la futilité – les hommes sont
transformés en singes ; ou bien s’effondrer sous les coups des forces naturelles –
114
Soustelle, vie quotidienne, 143.
Jacques Soustelle, Le drame algérien et la décadence française Réponse a Raymond Aron (Paris : Plon –
Tribune Libre 6, 1957), 2, 29-31, 37.
115
168
déluge, tremblement de terre ; ou enfin explorer dans ultime conflagration – la
pluie de feu qui n’est plus, à notre époque, une simple image légendaire. Le
mythe mexicain, expression d’une sagesse antique, rejoint l’inquiétude
d’aujourd’hui.116
Duncan Campbell Scott and the British connection
Duncan Campbell Scott was a principal exponent of an Indian policy that rested on
British foundations. The policy was aimed at swiftly civilizing Indians while sheltering
them from the ills of rapid industrialization by keeping them on reserves throughout a
hazily defined transitory phase. When Scott became Superintendant General of Indian
Affairs in 1913, he made several efforts to hasten the civilization process by proposing
changes to the Indian Act that would further restrict political and religious freedoms and
by toughening educational policies based on the suppression of Indian languages and the
separation of children from their parents.117
In the dawning of the twentieth century, on January 21, 1901 Queen Victoria died.
Her son was crowned King Edward VII. Victoria’s grandson George was named Duke of
Cornwall. Following three months of official mourning for the Queen, the newly minted
Duke was sent out on a grand tour of the empire. By the autumn of 1901, the Duke and
Duchess were on an extensive Canadian tour travelling largely on the Grand Trunk
Railway. Readers of The Montreal Star received a colourful commemorative insert in
September 1901 that featured photographs of His and Her Highness, the royal coat of
arms, the British flag, maple leaves and a poem by Duncan Campbell Scott,
116
117
Soustelle, quatre soleils, 12.
Titley, Narrow Vision, 75-109.
169
CANADA
TO THE DUKE AND DUCHESS OF CORNWALL AND YORK
REPRESENTING KING EDWARD VII
ON THEIR VISIT TO THE CANADIAN PEOPLE, SEPT. 1901.
I
With myriad voices mingled and upcaught,
In two tongues married in a single thought,
One hope, one fealty, one purpose and one heart,
All hail ! We shout with our free flag outrolled:
The rising sun hears welcome ! As she sets
Welcome, and welcome ! from the dripping nets
Of Nova Scotia, to the verge of the chart,
Where the grim Yukon thaws her stones to gold.
II
The Ophir climbs the shoulder of the world,
Leaving the sultry seas with isles empearled,
Where India smoulders in the torrid light,
Australia and her welded destinies ;
She crashes through the crests on Cartier’s track,
Where bold Lasalle dreamed of the Western Seas,
And Wolfe victorious lion-crowned the height.
III
Now in the freedom thou and mine make free,
Thy joyous people shout aloud to thee,
One hope, one fealty, one purpose and one heart :
In thee we presage of the hour.
Old England federate of her utmost isles,
One from the lone lodge where the trapper piles
His beaver skins, to where in nervous power,
London lies triumphing in her trampled mart.118
However clumsy the poem may appear to twenty-first-century readers, there is no
question that Scott, ever the loyal Canadian civil servant, knew well how to express a
vision of a global empire on which the sun never set and how to poetically evoke
Canada’s special place within that universe for popular purposes. From the poetic nod to
the founding peoples of “two tongues”; to the regional acknowledgements of the
maritimes and the far north west; to the evocation of far off Australia and India; to the
naming of great explorers and of the heroic, yet doomed, Wolfe; and finally to the
exaltation of the very nordicity and wildness that distinguishes an iconic Canada, Scott
118
Queen’s University Archives. Lorne Pierce Archives. Coll 2000.1 Box 80 Folder: DC Scott poems.
Poem originally published in The Montreal Star, September, 1901.
170
played on the imperial sentimentality that was no doubt vibrant for many readers of The
Star.
The commission by The Montreal Star was fitting given the poet’s stature. By
1901, Scott was 39 years old and already a twenty-year veteran of the Canadian civil
service. His day job in the Indian Department may have helped lend him sufficient
gravitas in the eyes of The Star’s publishers for this particular job. While the poem
groaningly lacks the subleties and refinement of his best work, there is no reason to
believe it represents anything other than an honest reflection of Scott’s own commitment
to empire. As his essay about the Treaty 9 negotiations, “The Last of the Indian Treaties,”
demonstrated, Scott unabashedly prescribed British monarchism and parliamentary
tradition as a basis for the development of Canadian nationhood, and as the civilized
standard Canada’s “Indians” could perhaps meet in the distant future.
His 1901 paean to the monarchy was not unique in Scott’s oeuvre. In 1911, Scott
penned the extremely patriotic “Fragment Of An Ode To Canada” as a weapons race over
naval armaments between European imperial powers and the aftermath of Moroccan
crises were leading Great Britain and its allies toward war,
And Thou, O Power, that ’stablishest the Nation,
Give wisdom in the midst of our elation;
Who are so free that we forget we are—
That freedom brings the deepest obligation:
Grant us this presage for a guiding star,
To lead the van of Peace, not with a craven spirit,
But with the consciousness that we inherit
What built the Empire out of blood and fire,
And can smite, too, in passion and with ire.
When all the flags of the Furies are unfurled,
When Truth and Justice, wildered and unknit,
Shall turn for help to this young, radiant land,
171
We shall be quick to see and understand:
What shall we answer in that stricken hour?119
Unlike Jacques Soustelle who undertook his service militaire in the 1930s and then served
in diplomatic, propaganda and intelligence gathering capacities in the inherently dangerous
France Libre movement, Duncan Campbell Scott was not a soldier. However, as a loyal
Canadian, he poetically proclaimed and urged his fellow citizens to stand on guard for
Canada in the event the “Furies” extant in the world demanded protection of the nation and
empire. Scott used poetry to express these sentiments in the build up to, and throughout,
two world wars.
Thirty-eight years after he composed “Fragment Of An Ode To Canada,” Scott
was again called on to herald a royal visit. The occasion, just prior to World War II, was
extraordinary. While members of the Royal family had been coming to Canada with
some regularity since 1867, King George VI was the first reigning British monarch to set
foot in Canada. Archival radio broadcasts reveal the patriotic fervor of large crowds (and
the unbridled enthusiasm of their public broadcasting service) that gathered to greet the
King upon his arrival in Quebec City and a week later on his tour of Manitoba in May
1939.120 In June, the royal couple departed from Halifax. Scott, by then a dignified icon
of Canadian letters in retirement in Ottawa, was commissioned to write a poem (excerped
in part below) that was read by an actor as part of a live radio broadcast on June 15, 1939,
“A Farewell To Their Majesties”
Master of life whose Power is never sleeping
In the dark void or in the hearts of men,
119
Duncan Campbell Scott, Collected Poems, (Toronto: Macmillan, 1926), 11.
CBC Radio archives http://archives.cbc.ca/society/monarchy/clips/13518/
http://archives.cbc.ca/society/monarchy/topics/2367/
Clips from Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s radio broadcasts of Royal tour arrival in Quebec City on
May 17, 1939 and on tour in Winnipeg May 24, 1939. (Accessed July 2012).
120
172
Hold them our King and Queen, safe in Thy keeping
And bring them to their western Realm again.
And for their Canada be watchful ever,
Grant us this boon, if there be one alone,
To do their part in high and pure endeavour
To build a peaceful Empire round the Throne.121
As a public intellectual in a young nation, Scott also viewed the British connection
as a means to distinguish Canada from its southern neighbour. Late in his life he reflected,
in a letter to a critic and editor, on how fundamentally different relationships with the
British empire contributed to cultural differences between Canada and the
United States,
If colonialism is the right word for our deadness, well and good; it requires a
definition? … The States had defeated Colonialism and their literature came from
a spring of fresh independent feeling. Our foundations are not built on rebellion
and a frontier period of political experiment but on acceptance of tradition and a
determination to perpetuate it.122
Conclusion
Duncan Campbell Scott and Jacques Soustelle were intellectual exponents of the
imperial systems of Britain and France respectively. As a bureaucrat in the Canadian
Indian Department, Scott upheld and refined policies that his new nation had inherited
from England. That inheritance was part of a global network of Native policies at play in
related, but regionally specific ways, in Australia, the Cape Colony, Canada, India and
New Zealand. As an artist, Scott’s poetry and prose was also imbued with loyalty to the
perceived ideals of the British empire. Jacques Soustelle was a lifelong adherent to the
LAC-BAC LMS-0204, Folder 30 “A Farewell To Their Majesties” was commissioned from Scott at the
request of CBC General Manager Gladstone Murray in a letter dated May 5, 1939. The poem was read on
air by “Mr. Willis”, almost certainly then CBC producer/announcer J. Frank Willis.
122
LAC-BAC E.K. Brown correspondence MG30 D61 Vol. 3, letter from DC Scott to Brown 19-23
November, 1943.
121
173
ideology of France’s mission civilisatrice. In the tradition of French liberal imperialists
such as Alexis de Tocqueville and Jules Ferry, Soustelle stubbornly held to the view that
France had rights and responsibilities for tutelage in the ‘developing’ world even in a
decolonizing modern world following World War II.
174
5. Arts and Science
Introduction
The chapter is about the intricate and foundational roles that Duncan Campbell
Scott and Jacques Soustelle played within a network of literature, social science,
journalism, photography and broadcasting during their careers. These activities mirror
their ideological concerns and underscore their importance as prominent, even
foundational, participants in their cultures. Scott was involved in the creation of a
national literature; he identified emerging Canadian talent in the visual arts; he was active
in both music and theatre in Ottawa; late in life he contributed regularly to the radio
service of Canada’s national broadcasting network. Soustelle was one of a handful of
academics who engineered a fundamental shift in French social sciences as archaeology
and anthropology accommodated a more socially active and present-day concern with
Indigenous societies in the field of ethnology. Soustelle was not intellectually active as an
ethnologist only. He contributed to newspapers and magazines throughout his adult life.
Beginning with his first experiences in Mexico, he unceasingly penned journalistic
articles and launched publications to advance his political views. As a graduate student he
contributed to leftist French weeklies; in the Second World War he ran a propagandistic
news agency for France Libre, the anti-Nazi resistance movement, out of Mexico City; as a
frustrated politician, he ran a bi-monthly anti-Gaullist magazine that tried to maintain
French Algeria. In the later part of his life, he contributed articles about Mexico, the
Middle East and southern Africa to French newspapers.
175
Scott emerged nationally from his civil service cocoon in Ottawa first as a cultural
columnist with The Globe newspaper in 1892-3.1 He was already well known among
literary circles in Canada, and to a lesser extent to the general reading public, as a poet
and writer of short stories from about 1890. Soustelle first came to prominence as a
prodigiously brilliant student2 and chronicler of all things Mexican in the French press, at
le Musée de l’Homme and in his first highly journalistic book Mexique terre indienne in
the 1930s. Unlike Scott, Soustelle’s career flourished at the beginning of the age of
electronic media and he was to survive through the first 30 years of television. As a
French politician and as Governor General of Algeria, Soustelle made frequent,
calculated use of radio; he produced a 33rpm vinyl recording of political speeches charting
what he viewed as the betrayal of authentic Gaullism by de Gaulle himself over the
Algerian question; he acted as curator of a UNESCO sponsored vinyl LP collection of
modern renditions of ancient Mexican music; and worked as a narrator, producer and
writer for television documentaries about his cherished Mexico.3
It is easy to see Scott and Soustelle primarily as public intellectuals and political
actors. However, both Duncan Campbell Scott and Jacques Soustelle were also artists. In
addition to his foundational role in the emergence of a national Canadian literary
movement, Scott was also an accomplished musician, a knowledgeable champion of
1
Wilfred Campbell, Archibald Lampman, and Duncan Campbell Scott. At the Mermaid Inn: Wilfred
Campbell, Archibald Lampman, Duncan Campbell Scott in the Globe 1892-93 (Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 1979)
2
Ullmann, mal aimé, 16-17.
3
Laboratoire de l’Éthnomusicologie, Musée de l’Homme, Paris; Jacques Soustelle “Profil du Gaullisme”
Hommes et Faits du XXe siècle (Paris: SERP, 1970); Marcel Boudo, dir. “La Splendeur du Mexique
Ancien” Part 1 les Azteques; Part 2 Les Guerriers du Soleil (Paris and Mexico City: France 3 Regions Marseille and Televisa, Mexico: 1978)
Digital copies available for screening at Inathèque, BNF Mitterand. Soustelle is credited as a producer and
appears on screen as narrator. The documentary was re-broadcast on French television within weeks of
Soustelle’s death on September 24, 1990.
176
Canadian painting and, certainly on the Treaty 9 Commission 1905-6, a photographer
with an ethnological eye. Scott travelled throughout northern Ontario in the summers of
1905 and 1906 with a Brownie camera. In photographs of Scott, that camera is sometimes
seen hanging around his neck.4 Like Scott, Soustelle too, was a more than competent
photographer; his photos from the 1930s illustrate two of his most convincing works on
Mexico.5 Each sometimes included their own photographs to illustrate articles, books and
reports. The choice of subjects, framing and means of publication reflect each man’s
intellectual concerns and political aims, as well as their aesthetics. For example,
Soustelle’s inclusion of photos of the victims of FLN torture in his memoir of serving as
Governor General of Algeria was designed to shock.6 While Soustelle will long be
remembered for his voluminous writings in the social sciences, journalism and for his
political tracts on the Algerian question and Gaullism, he also produced an edition on
Indigenous Mexican art7 and contributed essays to artistic collections of prominent
photographers about Mexican archeology and anthropology.8
As Scott was involved with the emergence of a literary movement in Canada,
Sosutelle was a key player in a process in which French ethnology and archaeology
emerged from its transparently imperialist roots and evolved generally into an
empathetic, interactive and participatory model.9 This chapter begins by looking at the
4
Stan Dragland, Floating Voice: Duncan Campbell Scott and the Literature of Treaty 9, (Concord, ON:
Anansi, 1994. The cover of Dragland’s book features a photograph of Scott with his camera at a portage
along the Treaty 9 route.
5
Mexique terre indienne and Les quatre soleils both feature Soustelle’s ethnographic field photography
from his first trips to Mexico.
6
Jacques Soustelle, Aimée Et Souffrante Algérie (Paris: Plon, 1956)
7
Jacques Soustelle, L'Art Du Mexique Ancien (Paris: Arthaud, 1966)
8
Verger, Pierre; Introduction et notes de Jacques Soustelle, MEXIQUE (Paris: Paul Hartmann, 1955)
9
Edison, Paul N. "Conquest Unrequited: French Expeditionary Science in Mexico, 1864-1867." French
Historical Studies 26, no. 3 (2003): 459-495; Christine Lauriere, Paul Rivet Le Savant Et Le Politique
(Paris: Publications Scientifiques du Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle, 2008)
177
academic context from which Jacques Soustelle emerged and the social scientific
tradition he helped to transform.
Jacques Soustelle, French Ethnologist
Soustelle was part of a French scientific tradition concerning Mexico that began in
the mid-nineteenth century. Photographers and amateur ethnologists such as Désiré
Charnay and Augustus and Alice de Plongeon documented peoples and archaeological
sites in central Mexico, the Yucatán and Chiapas from 1857 until the early part of the
twentieth century. These adventurers had carefully studied the itineraries of the Prussian
naturalist Alexander van Humboldt and the French missionary and proto-ethnologist
l’Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg who had preceded them.10 In an unpublished memoir,
Jacques Soustelle recalled his childhood fascination with adventure books and accounts
of North American Indians in the novels of James Fenimore Cooper.11 As a student
prodigy with an interest in Mexico, Soustelle would certainly have been aware of
Humboldt’s accounts before he set foot in Mexico in 1932.
As discussed in chapter 3, scholars who have looked carefully at the
transformative nature of travel on the lives of intellectuals have often focused on how the
exotic allure of Mexico with its clash and convergence of European imperial and
Mesoamerican cultures, its dramatic landscape, its astounding archaeological sites and its
array of Indigenous societies inspired the curiosity and imaginations of eighteenth- and
nineteenth-century travelers, explorers, amateur artefact collectors, military personnel
10
Lawrence Gustave Desmond, Yucatán through Her Eyes : Alice Dixon Le Plongeon, Writer &
Expeditionary Photographer (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2009), 23-26.
11
Jacques Soustelle, Mémoires, apocryphes sous la forme d’une dialogue avec Georges Suffert
Unpublished manuscript provided to the author by Bernard Ullmann, 4.
178
and missionaries.12 The young Jacques Soustelle followed that path. He was 19 years old
when he first arrived in Veracruz. His experiences between 1932 and 1936 inexorably
influenced the rest of his life as an authority about Mexico, as a political activist and as an
author.
Modern French social scientific involvement in Mexico began in earnest with the
French Intervention of 1862-1867 and the establishment of the doomed Mexican Empire
of Maximilian. Half a century earlier, the famous Egyptian campaign of Napoleon
Bonaparte had established a marker for a new French imperialism. Paul N. Edison has
observed that the Egyptian campaign became “an influential model for state directed
scientific conquest” that French governments employed in both Mexico and Algeria.
Bonaparte ultimately failed militarily in Egypt, but his foray succeeded as a scientific and
ethnographic enterprise. Adopting that social scientific methodology, Napoleon III,
Bonaparte’s nephew, commanded his appointed Mexican emperor Maximilian to
undertake a thorough agricultural, archaeological, botanical, ethnological, geographic and
geologic survey of what Napoleon III vaunted as his new Mesoamerican empire.13
In Mexico, Napoleon III’s scientific commission was an attempt to underscore both
his own self-styled imperial stature and to enlist the support of Mexican intellectuals who
wished to project their interpretation of a Mexican classical past of Aztec and Mayan
empires that, in their minds, resembled those of Greece and Rome. This perspective has
12
Robert D. Aguirre, Informal Empire : Mexico and Central America in Victorian Culture (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 2005); Christine Barthe (sous la direction de), le Yucatán est ailleurs
Expéditions photographiques Désiré Charnay (1857-1886) (Paris: Musée du quai Branly, Actes Sud, 2007);
Lawrence Gustave Desmond, Yucatán through Her Eyes : Alice Dixon Le Plongeon, Writer & Expeditionary
Photographer (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2009); Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes:
Travel Writing and Transculturation. 2nd ed. (London & New York: Routledge, 2008); Alfred H. Siemens,
Between the Summit and the Sea : Central Veracruz in the Nineteenth Century (Vancouver: University of
British Columbia Press, 1990); Sebastián Van Doesburg, Teobert Maler: Vistas de Oaxaca, 1874-1876
(Hamburg: Museum fur Volkerkunde, 2004).
13
Edison, “Conquest Unrequited,” 463.
179
long been shared by an array of Mexican anthropologists, archaeologists and social
engineers that have served Liberal, Interventionist, Porfirian, Revolutionary, PRIista and
post-PRIista Mexican administrations. The quest for modernity and the desire to establish
a positive image for Mexico abroad by linking it to a glorious classical Indigenous past, is
a point of connection between nineteenth-century liberals of la Reforma Juarista, the
científicos, a clutch of economists and sociologists who advised the dictator Porfirio
Díaz, and the indegenista social engineers of the twentieth century’s first great revolution
which erupted in 1910 in Mexico.14 Each group believed that the exploration and
cataloguing of Mexico’s archaeological treasures in partnership with foreign partners
would contribute to Mexico’s international prestige. Most critically of all, in a
consideration of Soustelle, each group believed fervently that the Indigenous descendants
of that storied past in order to build a modern Mexican nation.15
If one takes into account the proto-ethnology of Spanish missionaries of the
sixteenth century such as Bernardino de Sahagún and Toribio de Benevente Motolonia,
foreign social scientists like Jacques Soustelle were playing roles in an exchange that had
been ongoing since the colonial period, long before the stirrings of Mexican
independence from imperial Spain. This modernizing impulse that encompassed
14
See Claudio Lomnitz-Adler, Deep Mexico, Silent Mexico: An Anthropology of Nationalism
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001) 150-7.
15
Alexander S. Dawson, Indian and Nation in Revolutionary Mexico (Tucson: University of Arizona Press,
2004, 1-29; Dawson, "From Models for the Nation to Model Citizens," Journal of Latin American Studies
30.2 (1998): 279-308; Mary K.Vaughan and Stephen E. Lewis, “Introduction,” in The Eagle and the
Virgin: Nation and Cultural Revolution in Mexico, 1920-1940 Vaughan and Lewis eds, (Durham N.C.:
Duke University Press, 2006), 1-2, 4-5; Vaughan, “Nationalizing the Countryside: Schools and Rural
Communities in the 1930s,” in Vaughan and Lewis eds., Eagle and the Virgin, 173-4; Claudio Lomnitz,
“Final Reflections: What Was Mexico’s Cultural Revolution?,” in Vaughan and Lewis eds., Eagle and the
Virgin, 342-3; Lomnitz, Deep Mexico, 241-257; Lomnitz, “Bordering on Anthropology: Dialectics of a
National Tradition,” in Deep Mexico, Silent Mexico: An Anthropology of Nationalism (Minneapolis and
London: University of Minnesota Press, 2011), 228-62; Adrian A. Bantjes, “Saints, Sinners, and State
Formation: Local Religion and Cultural Revolution in Mexico,” in Vaughan and Lewis eds., Eagle and the
Virgin, 141.
180
archaeology and policies toward the Indigenous peoples of Mexico served its purpose in
forging links with established scientific communities in Europe and the United States and
in asserting the national identity of a raza cósmica as the basis of a modern mestizo
nation.16
Although the nature of the quest that Soustelle and his wife Georgette undertook
in the 1930s had its innovative aspects, he was walking in the footsteps of an established
French tradition. He arrived in Mexico at a critical stage of evolution for the French
social sciences. Paul Rivet, Soustelle’s doctoral supervisor and eventual patron as
director of le Musée de l’Homme, began his archaeological career with excavations in
Peru and Ecuador.17 Although Rivet enjoyed international respect for most of his career
as an advocate for a humanist, accessible ethnology and as a socialist champion of human
rights and resistance to Nazism, he began his career in the field as a collector of artefacts
that could be sent to French museums. The field conduct of the early European
archaeologists and anthropologists in the Americas raises ethical concerns for their
twenty-first-century counterparts. Rivet and his ilk routinely plundered Indigenous
gravesites in search of skulls and artefacts. In the tradition of founding French
anthropologist Paul Broca, Rivet was initially concerned with craniology and linguistics.
Broca insisted on the value of cranology as a means to analyze the differences between
peoples of the world and their respective evolutionary status.18 In Ecuador and Peru, prior
16
The literature on the relationship between the social sciences and Mexican national identity is extensive,
contested and fascinating. Some of the most useful and provocative works: Roger Bartra, La Jaula de la
Melancolía (México: Debolsillo, 2005) first published in Spanish 1987; Guillermo Bonfil Batalla, México
Profundo: Una Civilización Negada (México, D.F.: Secretaría de Educación Pública : CIESAS, 1987);
Claudio Lomnitz-Adler, Deep Mexico, Silent Mexico: An Anthropology of Nationalism. (London:
University of Minnesota Press, 2001); Lomnitz, Exits from the Labyrinth: Culture and Ideology in the
Mexican National Space (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992).
17
Laurière, Paul Rivet, 25-155.
18
Laurière, Paul Rivet, 91.
181
to World War I, Rivet was eager to exhume and collect the skulls and bones of
Indigenous people in burial sites. As recently as 2008, the remaining collections at the
then foundering Musée de l’Homme in Paris prominently featured a massive display of
skulls from around the world collected in significant part by Rivet’s generation as they
explored those regions of the world that appeared to be remote and exotic to European
sensibilities of the early modern era.
As Rivet’s biographer Christine Lauriére has noted, at no time at this stage of his
career, or later in fact, did Rivet deplore the activities of the guaqueros, the grave robbers
who were often employed by early archaeologists in their explorations. For Laurière the
contradiction between Rivet’s preliminary activities in Ecuador and Peru with his critical
role in the emergence of a more popular and widely accessible French ethnology by the
1930s, built on liberal conceptions of human rights and the presumption of equality
between peoples that lay at the heart of the mission to create Le Musée de l’Homme, is
acute,
Cela lui est possible parc qu’il ne considère pas l’humanité des Colorados de la
même façon que l’humanité blanche, européenne. Ces Indiens ne sont plus les
sujets de leur histoire, ils ne choisissent plus leur destinée, ils sont devenues des
représentants de l’humanité à un stade primitif ;19
There may be continuities between the traditions of the early French
anthropologists with their predilection for collecting artifacts of ‘doomed’ peoples before
time ran out and the attitudes that Soustelle carried with him to Algeria. Clearly in 195556, Soustelle believed that he and a cadre of French social scientists, including Germaine
Tillion, possessed a formula to assist in building a bridge between Indigenous groups in
Algeria and the modern world.
19
C. Laurière, “Paul Rivet (1876-1958), Le Savant et Le Politique” (PhD dissertation, École des Hautes
Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris, 2006), 133
182
What appears to be a cavalier approach to the dignity of living Indigenous
peoples, which Laurière condemns, places Rivet in a French and pan-European tradition
that went relatively unexamined until after World War I. The relatively few opponents
who were heard among western academics and journalists were swimming against the
tide of a new sort of imperialism embedded in a quasi-science of race and a
fundamentally pessimistic outlook on the prospects for Indigenousness in an
industrializing world. Many researchers, including Rivet, believed they were engaged in a
“salvage” operation to preserve the traces of “doomed” races for emerging nations and all
of humanity; in this light, their behaviour can be seen, at best, as a misguided humanism, at
worst as imperialism benefitting from academic peer review.20 As one of Soustelle’s
ethnological peers argued, this emphasis on salvaging what one might from doomed
cultures depended in part on a belief that Indigenous cultures were somehow “ figée,”
that is to say frozen or stuck in time. 21 Further, writing shortly after World War II,
Michel Leiris argued that ethnology remained bound up in imperialism even in a postcolonial or “decolonizing” world; ethnologists, after all, no matter what their particular
political views, derived their funding from governments and museums in Europe that
maintained colonizing relationships with countries in the developing world. Further, the
national academies and museums of Europe, Leiris maintained, which could afford to
send researchers to the developing world had enriched themselves and built their
reputations and collections during an earlier age of plunder. Historians of anthropology
20
Gruber, Jacob, "Ethnographic Salvage and the Shaping of Anthropology," American Anthropologist 72,
no. 6 (Dec., 1970), 1289-99.
21
Michel Leiris, “L’ethnographe devant le colonialisme” in Brisées (Paris: Mercure de France, 1966), 190193. This essay was originally delivered as a paper at an Association of Scientific Workers congress in
Stockholm on March 7, 1950.
183
have observed and commented extensively on the tensions between collecting, research
and Indigenous rights.22
In the twentieth century, activism and concerns about Native rights affected the
behaviour of social scientists in the field; in some cases, social scientists from the
developed world often made common cause with their subjects. This tendency has its
germinating stage in the French milieu of archaeology, anthropology and ethnology
began with Paul Rivet, Marcel Mauss and Lucien Lévy-Bruhl and the creation of
l’Institut d’Ethnologie at the University of Paris in 1926, where seventeen-year-old
Jacques Soustelle began to study in 1929.23 Some of these scholars were active in antifascist movements in France; their politics were generally left-of-centre. In the 1930s, they
and their students sought to align their domestic politics with their scientific endeavours
and concerns. Late in his own life, Soustelle paid homage to his mentor Rivet in a
Peruvian journal, as he recounted the shift the new ethnology institute represented for
French letters in the late 1920s and 1930s,
This institute provided instruction that would now be deemed “interdisciplinary”:
ethnography, physical anthropology, linguistics, pre-history, were all combined
and rigorously associated there. This was precisely affirmed in the surprising
mastery of Paul Rivet, his extraordinary lucidity and pedagogical talent. Paul
22
Christopher Bracken, The Potlatch Papers: A Colonial Case History (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1997); Regna Darnell, And Along Came Boas : Continuity
and Revolution in Americanist Anthropology (Philadelphia, Penn: J. Benjamins, 1998);
Regna Darnell and Julia D. Harrison, Historicizing Canadian Anthropology. (Vancouver: U.B.C. Press,
2006); Michelle A. Hamilton, Collections and Objections: Aboriginal Material Culture in Southern
Ontario, 1791-1914. McGill-Queen's Native and Northern Series. Vol. 63. Montreal: McGill-Queen's
University Press, 2010; Laurière, Paul Rivet, 172-4; Carole Reynaud Paligot, La République Raciale:
Paradigme Racial Et Idéologie Républicaine, 1860-1930 (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 2006).
23
Laurière, Paul Rivet, 211-286.; Pascal Ory and Jean-François Sirinelli, Les Intellectuels En France, De
l'Affaire Dreyfus à Nos Jours (Paris: A. Colin, 1986); Jean-François Sirinelli, Génération Intellectuelle :
Khâgneux Et Normaliens Dans l'Entre-Deux-Guerres (Paris: Fayard, 1988) 53; 104; 48889; Carole Reynaud Paligot, La République raciale: Paradigme racial et idéologie républicaine (18601930) (Paris : Presses Universitaires de France, 2006), 305-10.
184
Rivet, a medical doctor by training, converted into an ethnographer and ‘on the
ground’ archaeologist in Ecuador and became a man of synthesis. 24
The new institute represented a significant parting of ways with salvage
anthropology. Salvage anthropology rested in part on notions of imperial supremacy and
in the falsely benevolent belief that the remnants and memory of supposedly doomed
peoples would be preserved best in European museums on display to the public with the
rarest, most precious exhibits worried over by privileged academics and their students. In
1990 intellectual historian Jacob W. Gruber examined the assumptions that many of these
earlier social scientists shared,
The sense of salvage with its concern with loss and extinction, stressed the
disorganization in a social system at the expense of the sense of community; it
stressed the pathology of cultural loss in the absence of any real experience with
the normally operating small community.25
In 1992 Mary Louise Pratt furthered our understanding of the ‘imperial gaze’ in
archaeology, anthropology, ethnology and travel writing. Her analysis (and
condemnation) still raises fundamental questions for social scientists at work in
impoverished parts of world with rich Indigenous pasts. She raises fundamentally
important issues about the conduct and belief of the academic tradition which was
beginning to change as a student like Jacques Soustelle set out on the formative Mexican
expeditions of his ethnological career. Pratt asserts,
24
English translation by author. Original in Spanish: Este Instituto daba una enseñaza que se calificaría
ahora de “pluridisciplinaria”: etnografía, antropología física, lingüística, prehistoria, se combinaban y se
asociaban allí estrechamente. Pues era en eso precisamente que se afirmaban la sorprendente maestría de
Paul Rivet, su extraordinaria lucidez y su talento pedagógico. Ahora bien, Paul Rivet, médico de
formación, convertido en etnógrafo y arqueólogo “en el terreno” en Ecuador, ha resultado ser el hombre de
la síntesis. Jacques Soustelle. “Paul Rivet, sabio y ciudadano” Cielo Abierto (Lima: Volumen X, No.29,
Lima, Perú. Julio-Setiembre 1984), 3.
25
Gruber, “Ethnographic Salvage,” 1297.
185
The European imagination produces archaeological subjects by splitting
contemporary non-European peoples off from their pre-colonial, and even their
colonial, pasts. To revive Indigenous history and culture as archaeology is to
revive them as dead. The gesture simultaneously rescues them from European
forgetfulness and reassigns them to a departed age.26
Soustelle believed that he had largely parted company with an earlier European
and French social scientific tradition which objectified Indigenous peoples. When
Jacques Soustelle arrived for the first time in Mexico in 1932, he set out to find living
communities. His ethnographic and linguistic studies of the Otomi and Lacandon peoples
were rooted in a fascination with the continuity of indigenous cultures in the modern
world.27 As an anti-fascist activist and admiring student of Rivet who was an active
supporter of the Popular Front, the young Soustelle’s ethnological works and journalism
from Mexico repeatedly insisted on the living presence of Indigenous peoples in Mexico
and the urgent necessity of government to assist them in integrating into modern Mexico
with their identities and languages intact.28
Despite Soustelle’s emphasis on living cultures, he also made a huge collection of
artifacts that he and Georgette Soustelle brought back to France from their early trips. the
The Soustelles gathered hundreds of objects such as masks, ceramic bowls, looms, bows,
arrows, statues, musical instruments, toys and a fabulous feathered headdress from an
Otomi confradía.29
26
Mary Louise Pratt. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (London & New York:
Routledge, 2008 2nd edition. Originally published 1992), 132..
27
Soustelle, Mexique terre indienne (Paris:Plon, 1936), 34-54, 124-153.
28
Soustelle, terre indienne, 153, 264; Laurière, Paul Rivet, 369.
29
MqB, objets - fonds Soustelle 71.1933.71; 71.1936.
These materials are not on public display. Digital photographs of each are available to scholars in a
research library; throughout 2008, archivists there were unclear under what circumstances these objects
might actually seen by researchers or how long it might take to obtain access.
186
Jacques Soustelle formed a career at the cusp of a transition between an imperial
social science and a scholarly approach that attempted to accommodate new concerns of
a de-colonizing world and a growing recognition that the Indigenous peoples of the less
industrialized world, however complicated and messy their transition to modernity might
be, were worthy of respect and understanding. In the 1930s as a doctoral student in
Mexico and in the 1950s, as a colonial mandarin in Algeria (as we shall see in the next
chapter), Soustelle pinned himself uncomfortably between an atavistic sense of imperial
superiority and an ethnology imbued with a profoundly humanist acceptance and
fascination with Indigenous peoples residing in the living world. Soustelle’s eternal
dilemma is captured in his first book when he recounts meeting a grieving Lacandon
woman whose child was murdered. Soustelle was empathetic to her lot, but determined to
obtain a loom to bring back to Paris,
J’ai encore présent à la mémoire le visage ravage, rongé par le chagrin, de la vieille
femme. Je dus discuter avec elle assez longtemps pour acquérir un splendide
métier a tisser qu’elle possédait, chargé d’une belle jupe à des raies violettes,
jaunes et blanches, inachevée, sans doute depuis la catastrophe. Du seuil de la case
où elle demeurait accroupie à longueur de journée, elle levait sur moi ses yeux
rouges; sa voix était un soufflé. Tout en elle montrait une lassitude écrasante,
l’hébétude où est plongé un être après le coup le plus rude qu’il puisse supporter
sans mourir. La journaliste parisienne qui me demandait un jour à
Mexico: “Mais enfin, Monsieur, vos Indiens, est-ce qu’ils pensent?” aurait dû voir
cette femme; elle se serait rendu compte qu’au moins ils sont capables de
souffrir.30
Jacques Soustelle began his career at the forefront of a movement toward a
humanist, participatory and democratic ethnography and yet as his collecting habits in
Mexico attest, he did not entirely transcend earlier traditions. As with his political
activities following World War II, Soustelle, the social scientist, incarnated in stark relief
the contradictions of his day.
30
Soustelle, terre indienne, 216.
187
Duncan Campbell Scott and The Foundations of Canadian Culture
Duncan Campbell Scott is a foundational figure in Canadian literature. Scott was
at the vanguard of a new national literature, that while steadfastly British in orientation,
also sought to carve out an identity that would be distinct from contemporary British and
American works. As a poet, Scott and his friend and associate Archibald Lampman, a
civil servant with the Canadian post office, are among the very first writers in Canada to
articulate an appreciation and wonder about the Canadian natural world, particularly the
rugged boreal zone that they could see across the Ottawa River from their office
buildings. When Scott died a contemporary critic wrote the following appreciation in a
popular cultural magazine,
Is it too much to suggest that in these quietly powerful poems, seldom brilliant but
always competent in style and solid in substance, we catch an authentic glimpse
of the Canadian spirit at its finest?31
Canada’s new capital was not far removed from its recent past as a swampy, lumber town
from which it had been wrested by the government of Queen Victoria when she selected
it as the new nation’s capital. Its location along the Ontario-Queec border made it a
convenient solution to the squabbling of ambitious English-and-French-speaking colonial
politicians from candidate cities such as Toronto, Kingston and Montreal. With both
significant English-and-French-speaking populations, the capital grew along the Ottawa
River and Rideau Canal. Ottawa featured magnificent parliamentary buildings built on a
Desmond Pacey, “The Poetry of Duncan Campbell Scott,” in S.L. Dragland, edited and introduction by,
Duncan Campbell Scott: A Book of Criticism (Ottawa: The Tecumseh Press, 1974), 102. First published in
The Canadian Forum, XXVIII, 1948-9, 107-.
31
188
vague promise of nationhood which rose on a bluff looking out over the rapids of the
Ottawa River and beyond to the alluring Gatineau Hills of Quebec.32 It was an inspiring
setting for young poets. As a boy at his father’s Ottawa parsonage and again later as an
adult with a home on Lisgar Avenue and an office next to Parliament, Duncan Campbell
Scott could walk up Metcalfe Street to the Hill. Scott loved Ottawa; although he
occasionally expresssed frustration with his civil service career, he managed to find
solace in the cultural life Ottawa could support and was forever comforted by the city’s
natural setting, as he indicated in an essay from the 1920s,
In 1883 the population was about 30,000 and the place had the appearance and the
social life of a large town. There was not a great necessity for a street car system,
although a single line existed, and the country was almost part of the town. All
that is changed now, but the spirit of the city, the almost breathing personality that
pervades certain places, is unchangeable. The variety of the landscape, the vigour
of the rivers, and the comradeship the city has through them with the wild country
of their sources, and then the vision of the city itself seen from all quarters of the
environs as something exalted, an ideal as an inspiration, these remain; the
wilderness is a little pushed back, more remote, but the beauty of the situation can
never be destroyed.33
Some of Scott’s peers felt he was out of place. The British poet Rupert Brooke visited in
1913:
The only poet in Canada was very nice to me in Ottawa – Duncan Campbell
Scott, aetat. 50, married, an authority on Indians. Poor devil he’s so lonely and
dried there: no one to talk to. They had a child – daughter- who died in 1908 or
so. And it knocked them out. Canada’s a bloody place for a sensitive – in a way
2nd rate – real, slight poet like that to live all his life. Nobody cares if he writes or
doesn’t. He took me out to a Club in the country near, and we drank whisky and
32
See Sandra Gwyn, The Private Capital: Ambition and Love in the Age of MacDonald and Laurier
(Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1984), 293-5.
33
Duncan Campbell Scott, Duncan Campbell Scott: Addresses, Essays and Reviews edited by Leslie
Ritchie with an introduction by Stan Dragland (London, ON: Canadian Poetry Press, 2000), Vol 2, 332.
The editor reports that she found this previously unpublished essay at the Queen’s University archive in the
Lorne Pierce Collection. It is a more ample version of other Scott essays on Lampman including the
introduction to the Lampman collection Lyrics of Earth, Sonnets and Ballads, 1925.
189
soda and he said ‘Well, here’s to your youth!’ and drank its health and I nearly
burst into tears.34
Scott’s poetic isolation was increased when he lost his friend Archibald Lampman
in 1899, who died of heart disease when he was only thirty-eight. Scott, who had been
encouraged to write poetry by Lampman, spent the rest of his life preserving the artistic
legacy of his friend in supervising the publication of collections of Lampman’s works
and through essays, speeches and memorials. Scott turned his attention to Lampman’s
legacy at the very height of his responsibilities for the Indian department. He described
the effort of publishing a Lampman collection as a “labor of love.”35 The two met in
1884, the year after Lampman had begun working as a clerk in the Post Office. They
formed a friendship that was based on a love of verse and an interest in hiking and
canoeing in the wilds. In the essay cited above, Scott recalled first meeting Lampman and
their forays into the forests and waterways of the Gatineau Hills,
Archibald’s room had a window that looked to the west, a sunset window with a
view of the old tower of the Parliament House and within sound of the bell told
the hours. During the next summer, as we were both fond of the fields and woods,
we began those walking tours and canoe trips which took us near and far over the
country. Much of what was seen and experienced went into his lines, and I might
even now localize and identify the references, the point of view, the itinerary.36
Canadian literature scholars generally agree that Lampman and Scott together
represent a watershed in the emergence of a national English language literature. Perhaps
because of the vicinity of the boreal forest to Ottawa, their mutual affinity for canoeing
and tramping in the woods, Lampman and Scott evoke a landscape that is distinctly nonEuropean. Northrop Frye was fascinated by Scott and declared that Scott was, “…one of
34
Letter from Rupert Brooke to Wilfred Gibson July, 1913 cited in Sandra Martin and Roger Hall, Rupert
Brooke in Canada (Toronto: PMA Books, 1978), 19-20, also similar letter from Brooke to his mother, 45;
see also Gwyn, Private Capital, 465.
35
Duncan Campbell Scott letter to Lorne Pierce, July 15, 1925. QUA, Lorne Pierce archives.
36
Scott, Addresses, Essays and Reviews, Vol 2, 334.
190
the ancestral voices of the Canadian imagination.”37 In a number of essays, Frye returned
to Scott. He saw Scott as an expression of a Canadian type, deeply moved by and equally
terrified of the natural world. Frye appreciated the extent to which Scott internalized the
two realities in which he lived – as a rising civil servant in the post-colonial Canadian
administration and the artist who sought refuge and inspiration in the woods. Like John
Masefield in his eulogy of Scott at St Martin’s in the Fields in January 1948, Frye made
specific mention of The Forsaken, Scott’s morbid work about a starving Indian left
abandoned by her tribe; Frye juxtaposed that poem with another, On The Death Of Claude
Debussy, one of several Scott poems with specific mention to composers,
Whatever one thinks of the total merit of Scott’s very uneven output, he achieved
the type of imaginative balance that is characteristic of so much of the best of
Canadian culture down to the present generation,… On one side he had the world
of urbane and civilized values, on the other, the Quebec forest with its Indians and
lonely trappers. He could write a poem on Debussy and a poem on a squaw feeding
her child with her own flesh; he was at once primitive and pre-Raphaelite, a
recluse of the study and a recluse of the forest. Not since Anglo-Saxon times it
seems to me has there been the same uneasy conflict between elemental bleakness
and the hectic flush of a late and weary civilization that there has been in
Canadian poetry and painting of the period from Confederation to the depression.
It had to go as the country became more urbanized, and we may regret its passing
only if nothing new comes along to replace it.38
As an aging poet, Scott was vaguely aware of the bright new commentator on the
Canadian scene of literary criticism. During World War II, Scott was sufficiently
intrigued by the new contributor to The Canadian Forum to make inquiries to a critic
friend,
Do you get The Forum? If so you will have read the article in the Dec. No on
Canadian Poetry. If not I will send you one; let me have your comments
sometime. I suppose Northrop Frye is a nom de plume; if so who is he?39
Northrop Frye, “Letters in Canada” originally published in University of Toronto Quarterly, 1951, republished in The Bush Garden: Essays on the Canadian Imagination (Toronto: Anansi, 1971), 245.
38
Frye, Bush Garden, 9.
39
DC Scott to EK Brown Jan. 1944 EK Brown correspondence LAC-BAC Mg 30 D61 Vol. 3
37
191
In 1944 Scott was unaware of Fryre, the then emerging maven of Canadian letters. Scott,
however, would become a continuing subject for Northrop Frye in his contemplation of
the meaning and context of Canadian poetry and prose.40
In his poetic career no experience in Scott’s lifetime rivaled the Treaty 9
expeditions of 1905-6 which were ostensibly about the important business of quieting
Indian title to large swaths of northern Ontario. These trips separated Scott from the other
early Canadian poets and gave Scott exposure to the north and to Indian communities
which was infinitely more profound than the experience he had shared with Lampman in
the Gatineau. Like some of the earlier European ethnographers in Mesoamerica, Scott the
poet interpreted Indian peoples through a prism of conviction that Indian people were
doomed. Some of the aspects of the culture he witnessed survive in his poetry such as
The Forsaken and The Height of Land, powerful works that speak directly to Scott’s
northern voyages. When one surveys the expanse of Scott’s poetry, it is clear that his
travels in the north and his familiarity with British literature and the music and
architecture of European capitals from holiday trips to France, Italy and Spain inspired
his poetry.
The Indian Department bureaucrat indeed put the Treaty expeditions of 1905-6 to
the service of his poetry. Perhaps buoyed by the success of the 1905 expedition in
difficult areas such as the remote Albany River flowing north to James Bay, in 1906 Scott
invited his friend Pelham Edgar, principal of Victoria University in Toronto, to act as the
expedition’s secretary. The 1906 voyage would remain close to rail lines around Longlac;
in the Chapleau District north of Sudbury; touch upon the shores of Lake Superior near
40
Northrop Frye, review of The Book of Canadian Poetry by A.J.M. Smith, The Canadian Forum,
December 1943; Frye, Bush Garden, 245.
192
the present-day mining town of Marathon and Pukaskwa National Park close to the
mouth of the Pic, Pukaskwa and White Rivers on the Superior shore; and visit the
beautiful Lady Evelyn River en route to Lake Temagami and the Teme Augama
Anishinabe village at Bear Island before returning to Ottawa by train via Temiscaming,
Québec. In the villages of Biscotasing and Chapleau, the expedition was also joined by
the painter Edmund Morris. Morris made sketches that were the basis of some of the
portraits of Indian leaders that grace the halls of the Royal Ontario Museum to the present
day and after his death became the subject of what Edgar considered Scott’s greatest
poem Lines In memory of Edmund Morris.41 In a memoir of his own career, Pelham
Edgar relied on his personal Treaty 9 journal and “home letters” to reconstruct his 1906
experience with Scott in a chapter entitled “Travelling with a Poet”. The excerpt below is
from a journal entry of June 1, 1906, written in the vicinity of Temagami,
When we are near the shore the birds are very vocal and Duncan knows them
well… We have the Oxford Book Of Poetry always handy, and when I paddle
Duncan often reads. Then I take a wild respite, and make myself comfortable with
a pull at a pipe and a short peep at a book. A hard life is it not?... Duncan caught a
poem as we were going through Island Lake and is still reeling it in. I have not
seen it yet. This morning he read two splendid stories to me that he has written
lately.42
Scott was working on the romantic poem Spring on Mattagami, a work modeled
on the work of British poet George Meredith. Scott wrote about its inspiration in a letter
to E.K. Brown, a Canadian literary critic,
Pelham Edgar. “Travelling With A Poet” chap. 5 in Along My Path (Toronto: Ryerson, 1952) 60. See
also Edgar, "Duncan Campbell Scott." Dalhousie Review 7, (April, 1927). This article is taken from
Edgar’s speech about Scott at the time Scott was awarded the Lorne Pierce gold medal for 1927 by The
Royal Society of Canada. Edgar, “Twelve Hundred Miles by Canoe among the Indians in Northern
Waters,” Canada: An Illustrated Weekly Journal for all Interested in the Dominion, November 24 and
December 22,1906; January 5 &19, February 2 & 16; March 16, 1907.
42
Pelham Edgar. “Travelling With A Poet” chap. 5 in Along My Path (Toronto: Ryerson, 1952), 60.
41
193
A note on Spring on Mattagami: The provenance of this piece was my having
taken a copy of the Oxford book with me on that Indian trip; Pelham and I sitting
side by side in our thirty foot canoe had been reading ‘Love in a Valley’. I said to
myself (or out loud) I will write a love poem in the same form in these
surroundings; I did not think to rival it and I added the technical problem by using
an additional rhyme; and so I did it in three days. I think and hope the passion is
sincere but you will have to count the lady as imaginary, the lady of the city and
the garden and the Lido; the Venice stanza was written last as I felt some change in
colour would be a relief and add to the drama.43
Brown collaborated with Scott on a Lampman collection and edited a collection of
Scott’s poetry a few years after Scott’s death.44 As a Canadian academic often teaching in
the United States, Brown was an interlocutor and champion of what he considered the
best Canadian writing. The elder Scott became a friend and mentor to Brown who
admired Scott’s treatment of northern themes. When he reflected on Scott’s contribution
to Canadian letters a few years after the poet’s death, Brown opined that Scott’s poetic
output was directly inspired by journeys that the Indian Department underwrote,
particularly the Treaty 9 expedition,
The journey of 1905 was to be echoed and re-echoed through much of Scott’s
admirable poetry. For the finest, strongest, the deepest outcome, he had to wait ten
years. It was in November 1915 that he wrote “The Height of Land” in which he
has worked out with every resource of his art the illumination that comes to a
person of imaginative insight in the heart of the north.45
The Height of Land is a lengthy, elaborate reflection on the artist in the material world. Its
natural setting is the land that rises from the shore of Lake Superior. At the height of
land, waters part, some flowing north to James Bay and, on the southern slopes, down to
Lake Superior. Scott and the Treaty 9 team ascended the Pic River back to the rail line
43
Duncan Campbell Scott. Letter to EK Brown, November 12, 1943. EK Brown correspondence LACBAC Mg 30 D61 Vol. 3.
44
Duncan Campbell Scott, Selected Poems of Duncan Campbell Scott with a Memoir by E.K. Brown
(Toronto, Ryerson Press, 1951); Scott, E. K. Brown, and Robert L. McDougall, The Poet and the Critic: A
Literary Correspondence between D.C. Scott and E.K. Brown (Ottawa; Don Mills, Ont.: Carleton
University Press; Distributed by Oxford University Press Canada, 1983)
45
EK Brown, Winnipeg Free Press June 24, 1950 EK Brown correspondence LAC-BAC Mg 30 D61 Vol.
3.
194
after visiting the Indian community at Heron Bay. The Superior country held a
fascination for Scott; his short story Spirit River is about an isolated community of
settlers and Métis on its shores. The Height of Land relies directly on the poet’s
experience in the summer of 1906,
Now the Indian guides are dead asleep;
There is no sound unless the soul can hear
The gathering of the waters in their sources.
The poet celebrates the spectacular hilled country on the north shore of Lake Superior,
evokes the spirit of a shaman he calls Potàn the Wise and describes a campsite
surrounded by wild roses. As the contemplation of the spiritual and material worlds
continues, Scott makes one of the few direct poetic references to a tension between a love
of the natural world and the duties of life in modern, industrialized society,
Upon one hand
The lonely north enlaced with lakes and streams,
And the enormous targe of Hudson Bay,
Glimmering all night
In the cold arctic light;
On the other hand
The crowded southern land
With all the welter of the lives of men.46
“The Height of Land” had an evident impact on Canadian letters. Many of Scott’s literary
critics dwell upon it and some of the poets who emerged after him found its explicit
depiction of the boreal Canadian landscape and its concomitant depiction of the lot of the
artist in Canada, a source of inspiration.47 One of those poets was E.K. Pratt, a professor
Scott, “The Height of Land,” in Duncan Campbell Scott: Selected Poetry, Edited by Glenn Clever
(Ottawa: The Tecumseh Press, 1971), 52-5.
47
Stan Dragland. Floating Voice : Duncan Campbell Scott and the Literature of Treaty 9 (Concord, Ont.:
Anansi, 1994), 229-253; Gordon Johnston. Duncan Campbell Scott and His Works. (Downsview, ON,
ECW Press, 1983), 32.
46
195
of English at the University of Toronto.48 Twenty years younger than Scott, and once a
student of Pelham Edgar, Pratt reached out to the established poet as his own career was
beginning,
I am taking the liberty of sending you a little message of appreciation, although
unknown to you personally. I had the pleasure last week of spending an evening
at the home of Dr. Edgar, an esteemed friend of yours and no less beloved of
mine. In the course of the evening by the fire he read some selections from
“Lundy’s Lane”, particularly that magnificent “The Height of Land”. I had known
the poem for a considerable time, but its growing beauty was so vividly impressed
upon me as he read that I asked him if you would not think it presumptuous of me
to write you and express my appreciation directly…
I should dearly love to submit a few of my poems under separate cover for
your examination. I wanted to send some last year, but could not summon
sufficient courage. Dr. Edgar, however, gave me new faith. Most of the verse
springs out of the sea-craving life of Newfoundland, my native home.
And could you once in a while send me a poem of your own – a new one?
I should indeed be proud.
Sincerely yours,
E.J. Pratt49
At the height of his career, Scott’s influence in the Canadian artistic community
was not confined to literature. An active member of the Royal Society of Canada, Scott
served as its President in 1922. That same year he made a Presidential Address entitled
“Poetry and Progress”. Scott reviewed Canadian achievements in the humanities and
social sciences and proffered a report card on Canada approximately fifty years following
Confederation. In this speech, as in some of his correspondence with E.K. Brown, Scott
defended the poetic tradition which influenced him as a young man. In his own work, he
was a practitioner of a classic British tradition and did not venture into the modernism
that emerged in Britain and in the United States by the 1920s. In his keynote speech,
however, Scott issued a challenge to younger writers in Canada to experiment and seek
out newer forms,
48
49
Frye, Bush Garden. 181-197.
E. J. Pratt, letter to Duncan Campbell Scott, January 18, 1918. LAC-BAC, LMS-0204, Box 12
196
It is the mission of new theories in the arts, and particularly of new theories that
come to us illustrated by practice, to force us to re-examine the grounds of our
preferences, and to retest our accepted dogmas. Sometimes the preferences are
found to be prejudices and the dogmas hollow formulae. There is even a negative
use in ugliness that throws into relief upon a dark and inchoate background the
shining lines and melting curves of true beauty. The latest mission of revolt has
been performed inadequately, but it has served to show us that our poetic
utterance was becoming formalized. We require more rage of our poets. We
should like them to put to the proof that saying of William Blake: “The tigers of
wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction.”50
As an artist and spokesperson for Canada’s learned society, Scott called for change,
renovation and challenge within the arts, even in the realm of poetry. Scott wanted poets
to behave as bold revolutionaries, precisely as he hoped Indians would not. As a senior
mandarin during this period, Scott was championing a ramping up of Canada’s
assimilation policy through residential schools and a crackdown on Aboriginal spiritual
practices and political organization.51
Beyond literature, in his “Poetry and Progress” Presidential address to the Royal
Society, Scott noted the beginnings of the national archives of Canada and the
establishment of an ethnological institute in Ottawa. He also commended the
development of the profession of history in Canada with the establishment of professional
faculties of history at universities and the emergence of a more “scientific treatment” of the
discipline,
The former story-telling function of History and the endless reweaving of that
tissue of tradition which surrounded and obscured the life of a people has given
place to a higher conception of duty of the Historian and the obligation to accept
no statement without the support of documentary evidence. The exploration and
study of archives and the collation of original contemporaneous documents are
50
Scott, “Poetry and Progress”, 315. Also in Stan Dragland, Duncan Campbell Scott: A Book of Criticism
(Ottawa,: The Tecumseh Press 1974), 23. From William Blake’s “Proverbs of Hell,” in Blake’s “The
Marriage of Heaven and Hell,” The Poems of William Blake edited by W.B. Yeats (London, Boston,
Melbourne and Henley: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983 – originally published 1905).
51
E. Brian Titley, A Narrow Vision: Duncan Campbell Scott and the Administration of Indian Affairs in
Canada (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1986), 110-34, 173-78.
197
now held to be essential, and the partisan historian fortified with bigotry and blind
to all evidence uncongenial to his preconceptions is an extinct being.52
Perhaps Duncan Campbell Scott was correct in his assessment that the writing of Canadian
history was steadily improving after Confederation. He eventually became the focus of
that enhanced scrutiny. As the Native rights movement gained momentum in Canada in
the last half of the twentieth-century, a number of fine Canadian historians including
Robin Jarvis Brownlie, Sarah Carter, Olive Dickason, James R. Miller, John S. Milloy,
Adele Perry and E. Brian Titley began to look at Scott and the function of the Indian
Department in disturbing new ways.53 Scott himself had played his own role in the
development of a Canadian historiography; in 1910, he produced a biography of colonial
governor John Graves Simcoe as part of a series of biographical works that he coedited.54 The Simcoe biography was regarded as one of the best works in the series and
while readable strikes the twenty-first-century reader as an example of the “story-telling
function of History and the endless reweaving of tradition” in that its portrait of Simcoe
is almost hagiographical.
The sheer breadth of Scott’s “uneven” output, to use Frye’s adjective phrase about
his poetry, is remarkable. The poetry veers from excellence to craven sentimentality.
Scott’s “Indian poems” are perplexing in the tension between their poetic value and in the
Scott, “Poetry and Progress” 301-302.
Robin Brownlie, A Fatherly Eye: Indian Agents, Government Power, and Aboriginal Resistance in
Ontario, 1918-1939 (Don Mills, Ont. ; New York: Oxford University Press, 2003); Sarah Carter, Lost
Harvests (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1990); Olive Patricia Dickason, Canada's First
Nations : A History of Founding Peoples from Earliest Times (Toronto: McLelland & Stewart, 1992);
Miller, J. R. Compact, Contract, Covenant : Aboriginal Treaty-Making in Canada. (Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 2009); Miller, Skyscrapers Hide the Heavens : A History of Indian-White Relations in
Canada. 3rd ed. (Toronto ; Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 2000); Miller, Shingwauk's Vision : A
History of Native Residential Schools (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996); John Sheridan Milloy, A
National Crime: The Canadian Government and the Residential School System, 1879-1986 (Winnipeg:
University of Manitoba Press, 1999); Adele Perry, On the Edge of Empire : Gender, Race, and the Making
of British Columbia, 1849-1871 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001); Titley, Narrow Vision.
54
Duncan Campbell Scott and Matilda Ridout Edgar, John Graves Simcoe. The Makers of Canada Series.
Vol. 4. (London ; Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1926).
52
53
198
frequently racist, but sometimes sublime, human values they express. Scott was trapped as
an artist between his great ability to reflect truths and the hateful, imperial values of racial
superiority and rank paternalism that were the foundation of the civil service career at
which he proved so adept. For theorist and poet Dennis Lee, it is a matter of finding the
scholarly means to disentangle artists such as Scott from their imperially skewed
perceptions of subjects who are also “victims”,
The colonial writer does not have words of his own. Is it not possible that he
projects his own condition of voicelessness into whatever he creates? That he
articulates his own powerlessness in the face of alien words, by seeking out fresh
tales of victims?55
Scott was not only a poet; he produced collections of short stories; for a time, he
was a newspaper columnist with The Globe; he was an active musician who met his first
wife, the violinist Belle Botsford, when he was asked to accompany her on the piano at
an Ottawa recital; he was active in theatre both as a director of Ottawa’s Little Theatre
and as a playwright with works produced in Ottawa and at Hart House at the University
of Toronto.56 His association with the University of Toronto, which awarded Scott an
Honourary Doctorate in Literature in 1922, included a reading by Scott during a
centenary commemoration for the British poet John Keats in 1921 and readings of Scott
poetry featuring both Scott and an actor organized by Pelham Edgar at Victoria College
55
Dennis Lee, "Cadence, Country, Silence: Writing in Colonial Space." Boundary 2 3, no. 1, A Canadian
Issue (Autumn, 1974), 162-3, as cited in Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin, The Empire Writes Back, 142.
56
LAC-BAC, LMS-0204, Box 10, Folder 5. This folder contains Botsford ephemera. Belle Botsford was
from Boston. She studied violin in Paris for 5 years; Sandra Gwyn, The Private Capital: Ambition and Love
in the Age of MacDonald and Laurier (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1984), 447-470.
Scott’s one act play “Pierre” was produced at Hart House Theatre in the 1920-21 season; his “Joy! Joy!
Joy!” was performed by the same company in 1925-6. Thomas Fisher rare Book Library – Hart House
Archives. A78-0023 Box 002 1928 Hart House Theatre.
199
in 1925.57 In 1927, Scott combined his civil service connections with his musical
sensibilities when he collaborated with the folklorist Marius Barbeau and the composer
Ernest MacMillan on the English transcription of three Nisga’a songs from the Nass
Valley that had originally been recorded by Barbeau.58 At the time MacMillan was both
principal of the Royal Conservatory of Music and head of the faculty of Music at the
University of Toronto.59
When Northrop Frye reflected on the emergence of Canadian letters, he argued
that Canada’s unique position as a former colony of Great Britain which soon after came
under American cultural and economic dominance created, “a frostbite at the roots of the
Canadian imagination”. 60 Perhaps Scott’s overall output is a singular manifestation of
such a “frostbite”. Scott emerged in a literary and political environment at a time when
Canadian nationalists felt an existential threat to the developing country’s survival
against the odds of geography and American Manifest Destiny. At the same time, such
Canadians felt a deep attachment to Great Britain. As Frye argued, these conditions
created a conceptual “garrison”. A Canadian artist/mandarin such as Scott, a poet at the
centre of Frye’s stinging analysis of Canada’s intellectual lot, was an archetypical
resident within such a “garrison”,
57
Titley, A Narrow Vision, 28; program Hart House Theatre, University of Toronto, June 23, 1921. Lorne
Pierce archives COLL 200.1 Box 80 File DCS poems QUA. Scott read “Ode for the Keats Centenary;”;
“Bard of The Northland Stirs Hearers With Poems,” The Globe, April 23, 1925, City News Section; D.M.R.
Bentley “Shadows in the Soul: Racial Haunting in the Poetry of Duncan Campbell Scott”. University of
Toronto Quarterly, Volume 75, Number 2, Spring 2006,, “Shadows in the Soul”, 760; Stan Dragland.
Floating Voice: Duncan Campbell Scott and the Literature of Treaty 9 (Toronto: Anansi, 1994),
89, 161.
58
Marius Barbeau, English version by Duncan Campbell Scott, transcribed and arranged by Ernest
MacMillan. Three Songs of the West Coast: Recorded from singers of the Nass River Tribes, Canada
(London: The Frederick Harris Co., 1927) Edward Johnson Music Library, University of Toronto.
59
Ernest Macmillan in The Canadian Encyclopedia, http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/articles/sirernest-macmillan Accessed May 2012.
60
Northrop Frye, review of The Book of Canadian Poetry by A.J.M. Smith, The Canadian Forum,
December 1943.
200
Small and isolated communities surrounded with a physical or psychological
“frontier”, separated from one another and from their American and British
cultural sources: communities that that provide all that their members have in the
way of distinctively human values, and that are compelled to fell a great respect
for law and order that holds them together, yet confronted with a huge,
unthinking, menacing and formidable physical setting – such communities are
bound to develop what we may provisionally call a garrison mentality…
A garrison is a closely knit and beleaguered society, and its moral and
social values are unquestionable. In a perilous enterprise one does not discuss
causes or motives: one is either a fighter or a deserter.61
In poetry, fictional prose, journalism and music, Duncan Campbell Scott
was a foundational figure in Canadian culture. Esteemed by his contemporaries,
he articulated an artistic vision for the new nation state. As a bureaucrat, he also
exemplified the values and priorities that were prevalent in Canada during his
lifetime.
61
Frye, Bush Garden, 225-6.
201
Jacques Soustelle and the vulgarisation of French Ethnology
Whereas Duncan Campbell Scott was a person of modest origins who rose to serve
Canadian political elites and frequent the country’s artistic establishment. Jacques
Soustelle, born of the working class, was at the forefront of a move to popularize French
ethnology in the 1930s. Having begun his graduate studies as a prodigy from Lyon in
philosophy, Soustelle quickly developed a passion for the hands-on, field ethnology
championed by Paul Rivet. As a student of Rivet’s, Soustelle was among a small group of
ethnological neophytes who moved away from the ‘arm chair’ efforts of a Marcel Mauss
and others professors associated with l’École normale supérieure in developing a
participant-observer model of ethnology that was given a home at l’Institut de l’Ethnologie
where Soustelle studied.
As French archaeology and anthropology spun off a new ethnographic
form, Rivet and his students promulgated a set of ideas that encouraged acceptance and
observation of Indigenous societies co-existing, however uneasily, with the modern
industrialized world. Soustelle enunciated his new faith in his first book Mexique terre
indienne,
Considérer les Indiens comme constituent des nationalités, leur reconnaitre des
droits culturels et linguistiques, leur donner l’espagnol comme langue de relations,
mais leur garantir le respect des leurs (j’ajouterai même: leur apprendre à écrire),
bref, respecter la substance des sociétés indigènes pour qu’elles entrent de plainpied dans l’unité du Mexique, avec leurs particularités, leurs fierté,
bannières déployés, en pleine conscience d’elles-mêmes. Car c’est tous ensemble,
comme l’histoire de leurs races et de leurs terres les a formés, tous ensemble et
tous entiers, sans renier aucun d’entre eux ni rien en eux-mêmes, que ceux d’en
bas sortiront de leur humiliation et gagneront leur place au soleil. Rien ne doit être
perdu des richesses de civilisation dont ils sont porteurs. Elles sont, ces richesses,
comme des pierres précieuses formées dans les profondeurs noirs, qui n’ont même
pas conscience de les contenir; la tâche d’aujourd’hui est de les découvrir et les
202
dégager, afin qu’elles soient vues de tous. Ainsi le passage dans le monde des
générations oubliées n’aura pas été tout à fait vain.62
At a time when the Popular Front, a left-of-centre coalition, gained political power in
France, Paul Rivet and Jacques Soustelle were directors of le Musée de l’Homme which
opened its doors in the Trocadero Palace in 1938.63
This popularizing effort, or vulgarisation as it was called en français, developed
in a threatening European political context. Rivet and his young associates, such as
Soustelle, were alarmed by the growing strength of Nazism in Germany, of Italian
fascism under Mussolini and the assault by Franco against Spanish republicanism. In
1934, Soustelle, under his own name rather than the pseudonym Jean Duriez, wrote a
highly polemical article raising the spectre of fascism gaining a foothold in France.64 His
alarm appeared prophetic in light of the easy alliance in the name of the family and
traditional French values that Général Pétain would strike with Hitler’s government in
1940,
Le grand art de fascisme (et ce par quoi il diffère de n’importe quel régime
d’autorité), c’est de faire passer les opprimés du côté des oppresseurs. À la
répression physique s’ajoute la pression morale, l’hypocrite et menteuse
déclamation qui retourne contre leur propre classe des travailleurs aveuglés.65
Soustelle’s impolitic assertions about the dangers of a blinded working class, of the social
toxicity provoked when the oppressed find common cause with their oppressors,
foreshadowed his analysis of the rise of the Front national de libération (FLN) in Algeria
twenty years later. As with his embrace of the pedagogy of the rural education campaigns
62
Soustelle, terre indienne, 153.
Nicole Racine, “Jacques Soustelle” in Jean Maitre, Dictionnaire Biographique Du Mouvement Ouvrier
Français – Quatrième partie 1914-1939 de la Première à la Seconde Guerre Mondiale, Tome 41 Rova à
Szy (Paris: Les Éditions Ouvrières, 1992), 391; Laurière, Paul Rivet, 385-427.
64
Jacques Soustelle, “Répétition générale du fascisme : a ceux qui disent « le fascisme n’est pas possible
en France »”, Spartacus, December 7, 1934, 7.
65
Ibid.
63
203
of indigenismo in Mexico, Soustelle stubbornly applied his anti-fascism of the 1930s
Europe to the Algerian conflict. Significantly, in his staggeringly energetic efforts to
launch le Musée de l’Homme at the side of his mentor Rivet, Soustelle fancied himself a
servant of the popular classes, determined to open a previously rarefied world of
academic exoticism to everyday French people. Similarly years later, Soustelle saw
himself as an advocate for the popular masses of Algeria in the teeth of the armed appeals
of the FLN.
The promulgators of le Musée de l’Homme were determined to find means to
popularize the dissemination of information about the ‘forgotten’ societies in the colonized
world. Soustelle proudly explained how the new museum would bring ordinary French
people and their families into contact with a rich ethnographic vision of the past and
present. He appeared on radio and contributed articles about the mission of the new
museum in the popular press.66 Soustelle’s desire to open wide the doors of the new
museum was influenced by political concerns. He saw museums and public culture as
essential, effective means of public education in perilous times. In an interview with a
Parisian magazine published in 1938 published to coincide with the opening of le Musée,
Soustelle emphasized the universal qualities of human achievement that ethnological
museums exposed while warning of the lethal racial theories which were very popular
among German scholars,
Je vous parlerai du point de vue de l’ethnographie, en ce qui concerne les
théories sur les races humaines mises en vogue dans certains pays par des
« autorités » qui ne pas savantes. Nous, ethnologues, nous voyons qu’il n’y a pas
de race qui n’ait contribué au patrimoine commune de la civilisation par des
inventions souvent capitales. Aussi bien, si on fait l’inventaire du « matériel » de
Nicole Racine, “Soustelle, Jacques”, 391; Laurière. Paul Rivet; Correspondance Havas, January 28,
1936. “Lettres Du Mexique,” Featuring an unattributed report on Soustelle’s research in Mexico, including
several quotes from Soustelle. MNHN, clippings file.
66
204
la civilisation européenne, n y trouve des apports extrêmement importants de
populations de toutes origines et notamment d’Asie Mineure, ou sémitiques, tel le
christianisme. D’autre part, le monopole de là haute civilisation n’appartient
nullement à l’Europe. Cet été, j’étais à Copenhague, à un congrès international de
savants. On n’y pouvait voir personne, sauf les allemands, qui prît au sérieux le
racisme, et pas même eux quand on les prenait à part.67
Efforts of popular education by the leading lights of le Musée de l’Homme were not
restricted to the print media. Even before the Musée opened its doors, both Jacques and
Georgette Soustelle, as well as their colleague Germaine Tillion, made radio broadcasts
about their journeys and scientific findings in Mexico and Algeria. The scripts reveal the
presenters’ efforts to popularize their scientific work; Germaine Tillion, for example,
dedicated one program to the simple re-telling of a Berber fable she had translated;
Georgette and Jacques Soustelle collaborated on one program about Mexico when they
engage in a dialogue about a festival they had witnessed in Otomi territory of north
central Mexico.68 Some of Jacques Soustelle’s Mexican lectures are preserved in the
digital audio division of the Bibliothèque Nationale – Mitterand. While Soustelle spoke in
every day language for his radio public, he did not entirely shed his professorial skin. His
perorations are punctuated by the sharp sound of chalk striking slate as Soustelle would
emphasize and repeat a point while writing a key word on a blackboard for the benefit of
a live audience.69 In his embrace of radio, perhaps Soustelle had been
67
Jacques Soustelle interview in L’Oeuvre sur Louis Le Grand November 20, 1938. “1/4 d’heure avec un
jeune – Jacques Soustelle sous–directeur du Musée de l’Homme” by Georges Schneeberger. MNHN 2 AM
1B11a
68
Jacques Soustelle, Radio Conférence 85 « Une fête dans un village indien du mexique” »December 20,
1937. MqB Document (15058) id Dossier 1611 DA000312; Radio Conférence 50 « A travers les
montagnes du Mexique » June 23, 1936. Document (15058) id Dossier 1604 DA000316; « Chez les
Indiens Lacandons » June 2, 1935, Document (15027) Dossier 1604 DA000319; Germaine Tillion, Radio
Conférence 77 « Un Conte Chaouïa », July 19, 1937. MNHN 2am 1 C9 a
69
Jacques Soustelle, Radio Conférence 85 “Une fête dans un village indien du mexique” December 20,
1937. MqB Document (15058) id Dossier 1611 DA000312
205
influenced by popular education radio of revolutionary Mexico that was prevalent in the
1930s and served to promote nationalism, the folk arts and tourism.70
As a student of Paul Rivet and as a principal actor in the creation of Le Musée de
l’Homme Jacques Soustelle was at the leading edge of a fundamental shift in French
social sciences. Part of the new impulse reflected a pronounced commitment to social
justice, to the recognition of Indigenous peoples as something other than doomed artefacts
of ancient days, and to the wish to open a diverse world of civilizations to ordinary
citizens through public education and access to institutions such as Le Musée. Michel
Leiris, one of the Soustelles’ colleagues expressed the new thinking in MASSES, one of
the left-leaning journals to which Soustelle contributed from Mexico. Leiris proclaimed
his understanding of the social and political commitment of the emerging ethnography,
Considérant toutes chose comme liés, n’étudiant jamais un élément d’une société
envisagé isolément, mais l’examinant au contraire en fonction de tous les autres,
observant les mœurs, les coutumes les langues, non comme des choses figées,
comme des curiosités seulement intéressantes par leur exotisme ou leur
archaïsme, mais comme des choses vivantes qu’il s’agit de saisir dans leur
mouvement, dans leur actualité, l’ethnographie apparaît une science éminemment
dialectique.71
In this spirit, Soustelle himself would continue a conversation about the practical
application of ethnographical study as a lever to redeem and elevate oppressed peoples in
his relationship with Germaine Tillion. Soustelle relied on fellow ethnologist Tillion’s
expertise of Indigenous Algerians as the bulwark of a short-lived, extremely ambitious
; Radio Conference 50 « A travers les montagnes du Mexique » June 23, 1936. Document (15058) id
Dossier 1604 DA000316 ; « Chez les Indiens Lacandons » June 2, 1935, Document (15027) Dossier 1604
DA000319.
70
See Joy E. Hayes. "National Imaginings On the Air: Radio in Mexico, 1920-1940" The Eagle and the
Virgin: Nation and Cultural Revolution in Mexico, 1920-1940. Ed. Mary Kay Vaughn and Stephen E.
Lewis (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), 243-258.
71
Michel Leiris, ”La Jeune Ethnographe,” SPARTACUS, No.3, March 1933, 10.
206
and ultimately doomed social reform program built on Soustelle’s perception of Mexican
indigenista principles in 1955-6. These efforts which will be amply described in the
following chapter belie the reductive perception of Soustelle as a ‘fascist’ sympathizer, a
fellow traveller with l’Organisation de l’armée secrète (OAS) which became a widely
shared misperception following his infamous falling out with de Gaulle over Algerian
independence. For the remainder of his life Soustelle adamantly maintained that, as
Governor General of Algeria, he attempted to invoke sound, scientific methods that had
been formed by his experiences and observations in Mexico as a young ethnologist.72
It was the Mexican connection that fuelled Soustelle’s meteoric rise in the French
academy prior to the Second World War. Further, it was a fascination with Mexico and
Latin America that soldered the relationship with Paul Rivet as doctoral supervisor and
intellectual mentor. As war clouds gathered in Europe, the Musée de l’Homme traded on
the strengths of its leadership, specifically the americanistas who founded it: Rivet and
his academic prodigy Soustelle.
Rivet believed that the ongoing discovery and display of Mesoamerican cultures
would help popularize interest in ethnology and bring new audiences to the Musée. Rivet
and Soustelle vaunted the richness of Mexico in the mainstream press. Soustelle trumpeted
the significance of discoveries at Monte Alban in the state of Oaxaca that were uncovered
in part by Mexican archaeologist Alfonso Caso, who would remain a critical
Mexican scientific contact for the French researchers, 73
Jacques Soustelle, « Souvenirs, apocryphes dans la forme d’une conversation avec Georges Suffert, »
Unpublished memoir provided to the author by Bernard Ullmann,1988 ; Odile Rudelle , Témoignages sur
la Guerre d’Algérie, Fondation nationale des services politiques, Service des archives d’Histoire
contemporain, Archives de Université Science-Po, Paris. Interview with Jacques Soustelle. February 19,
1979.
73
Jacques Soustelle correspondence with Alfonso Caso 1938-40. May 23, 1939: Soustelle enlists Caso’s
assistance on behalf of French doctoral candidate Roger Labrouuse; January 1, 1940: Soustelle writes of
72
207
I believe that Mexico possesses the richest ethnological treasures in the world.
After viewing the excavations being made at Ohaca (sic) near Montalban I must
say I believe the discoveries made there can be compared with the finding of
Tutankaman’s tomb.74
Rivet and Soustelle emphasized Mesoamerica in the heady days surrounding the opening
of the new museum. A press release from the division run by Georgette Soustelle invited
reporters to preview of a major exhibition in 1939,
Département d’Amérique communique de presse Musée de l’Homme
INAUGURATION DE LA NOUVELLE SALLE D’AMERIQUE
-PRÉSENTATION À LA PRESSE
Le moulage d’une grande stèle de Copan annonce le monde maya et
mexicain. Céramique, masques, statues, révèlent la civilisation raffinée de ces
peuples…
L’ouverture au public de cette riche section constitue une nouvelle étape dans la
réorganisation totale du musée d’ethnographie devenue, en 1938, le Musée de
l’Homme.75
The exhibition of 1939 included a soirée Mexicaine featuring music and dance attended by
Mexican diplomats.76 This event dovetailed with contemporary Mexican campaigns to
project its rich folklore to Europe and the United States. Such campaigns began under the
modernizing dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz and were continued enthusiastically by postrevolutionary governments.77
Emphasizing the importance of Latin America also fit with Rivet’s and the
Soustelles’ patriotism and sense of France’s place in the world. If the French academy,
ending scientific exchanges because of the war while declaring that the Musée will remain open. MNHN
Archives Musée l’Homme Dossier Mexico (I) 2 AM 1K65e
74
Paul Rivet as quoted in Peter C. Rhodes, United Press wire service, November 4, 1938, dateline: Paris.
MNHN 2 AM 1K66a MEXCO (11)
75
Press release inviting media to an information session to be held on January 18, 1939. MNHN 2 AM 1
11.
76
Correspondence concerning soirée mexicaine. Soustelle to Gilberto Bosques, Consul General of Mexico.
February 25, 1939. MNHN Archives Musée l’Homme Dossier Mexico (I) 2 AM 1K65e
77
See Alex Saragoza, “The Selling of Mexico: Tourism and the State, 1929-1960,” in Fragments of a
Golden Age: The Politics of Culture in Mexico Since 1940 edited by Gilbert Joseph, Anne Rubenstein &
Eric Zolov with a forward by Elena Poniatowska (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001), 91-115.
208
and by extension, the French public, could shift its gaze to the Latin countries of the
Americas, it would decrease the cultural dominance of the United States in the French
imagination. It also opened a window on part of the world where American influence
often had a negative connotation because of aggressive American foreign policies in much
of Latin America.78 In 1938, Soustelle wrote a magazine article inviting academics and
even tourists to consider the richness of Latin America as an alternative, and perhaps
antidote, to Washington’s heavy influence,
Nous vivons en un temps où un Etat américaine domine l’économie
mondiale et même certaines formes de sentir ; son cinéma envahit nos villes,
comme ses crises affolent nos bourses… On sait aussi qu’en dehors des EtatsUnis, le continent découvert et colonisé depuis quatre siècles porte de vastes cités
saxonnes ou Latines : Québec, Mexico, La Havane, Rio, Buenos-Aires… Que
reste-t-il donc à découvrir en Amérique?
…Au Mexique, au Pérou, dans toutes les Andes, dans les villages que l’on
atteint sans peine par le rail ou la route, ou tout au plus à dos de mulet, vivent des
Indiens à qui l’on a accordé le plus souvent qu’une attention distraite, comme à des
choses trop habituelles. Or, jamais leur langage n’a fait l’objet d’une étude
sérieuse, jamais on n’a recherché, derrière le mince écran du christianisme
imposé, leurs véritables croyances, jamais on n’a entrepris une analyse
approfondies de leurs caractères ethniques grâce aux méthodes les plus récentes
de l’anthropologie. Le champ des recherches possibles est donc immense. Et il
faut faire vite, car les populations perdent leur langages, oublient leurs traditions,
disparaissent par le jeu des métissages.79
Jacques Soustelle made a foundational contribution to modern Europe’s comprehension
and appreciation of Indigenous cultures in the Americas. The work is distinguished by the
breadth of his curiosity and the elegance of his writing.80
Ultimately, as a social scientist Soustelle had a foot in a world of collections
driven by imperial ambition and another in an emerging, more popular, accessible,
Jacques Soustelle. “Amérique inconnue”, SCIENCE, May 193, .3-4. MNHN 2 AM 1B11a
Ibid.
80
For an assessment of Soustelle’s contribution see the papers presented and published in 1995 in his
honour. Jacqueline de Durand, Forest, Georges Baudot, and Jacques Soustelle. Mille Ans De Civilisations
mésoaméricaines : Des Mayas Aux Aztèques : Mélanges En l'Honneur De Jacques Soustelle (Paris:
L'Harmattan, 1995).
78
79
209
diffusionniste (to use Christine Laurière’s formulation) form of ethnology. 81 He worked
indefatigably to open a new museum to broader audiences. The new museum boasted its
ability to stage exhibitions of material that Soustelle and his nineteenth-century scientific
predecessors has wrested from Mesoamerica from an assumed position of European
cultural superiority. In his political journalism from the 1930s, Soustelle celebrated the
capacity of contemporary Indigenous peoples, who crafted a syncretic faith from
indigenous and Christian roots of their own invention. He celebrated the capacity of
indigenous Mexican cultures to adapt new technologies in domains such as agriculture
and music. On the other hand, as his 1938 article in SCIENCE demonstrated, he also
rued the process of mestizaje through which supposedly purely indigenous characteristics
were subsumed in new regional and national identities.
Duncan Campbell Scott and Jacques Soustelle: The Artists As Mature
Men
The final stages of the careers and public lives of Duncan Campbell Scott and
Jacques Soustelle bear little resemblance. Scott faded elegantly from the scene into a
respectful, fruitful retirement which lasted fifteen years; Soustelle never retired. He
remained vitally active in France, Mexico and elsewhere until the end of his days. Scott
retired in 1932. As a newly re-married man in his sixties, Scott settled into a life of
writing, editing, playing and listening to music and receiving vistors from the world of
letters and the visual arts at his handsome home on Lisgar Street in Ottawa until his death
in December 1947.
Duncan Campbell Scott was saved from a solitary retirement by romance late in
his life. Belle Botsford, Scott’s first wife, died in 1929.82 The couple had lost their only
81
82
Laurière, Paul Rivet . 211-278.
Titley, Narrow Vision, 28-9.
210
child Elizabeth, when she died in 1907 of a fever while attending a Parisian convent
school.83 As a mature artist contemplating retirement from the civil service, Scott met a
second muse who would come to mean as much to him as the young Archibald Lampman
had meant when the two emerged as beacons of Canadian poetry. Elise Aylen was a
young poet from a well-to-do French Canadian Ottawa family. In 1929, she was twentyseven years old, the recently widowed Scott was sixty-seven. Aylen had approached the
venerable Scott with samples of her poetry. Scott was soon smitten. He soon began to
write amorous letters to her as he travelled the country on Department business,
Friday morning and what a glorious day – the sun pouring down the Bow Valley
– the mountains like great crystals brilliant with snow & flawed with dark ridges
and circles of trees… How I wish you cld see it all with your clear eyes & your
sensitivness to beauty – I have seen the Rockies and the Selkirks many times but
never in March & I have an added interest this time something makes me look at
them thro’ a lens that gives a new aspect a fresh meaning would that I cld get it
into words & say them - 84
Scott wrote the forward to Aylen’s Roses of Shadow, a collection of her poems. In that
short essay, Scott expressed his dismay about much of modern poetry and, as he had done
in his Presidential Address to The Royal Society of 1922, insisted that attentiveness to
tradition was the only true means to advancement in the arts,
You cannot dispense with art in poetry, and art is a hard mistress, but she is liberal
with rewards. Much of the ugliness of current free verse arises from the lack of
practice in the older forms and if my advice were to be sought, I should advise
poets to invent even more difficult forms within which to exercise their powers of
invention. Mastery is to be gained through severe discipline rather than through
easy liberty.85
83
Ibid, 29.
Duncan Campbell Scott, letter to Elise Aylen CPR train March 6, 1929. LAC-BAC LMS-0204
85
Duncan Campbell Scott forward to Roses of Shadow, Elise Aylen (London: Macmillan at St. Martin’s
House, 1930), iv
84
211
The introduction to Aylen’s collection reveals an important element of Scott’s assessment
of poetry. He was not anti-modern, but believed newer poetry should be rooted in
classical forms. Here, as in his essay to the Royal Society, Poetry and Progress, Scott
argued for a demanding intellectual standard for development of the arts in Canada.
The determination evinced in his office life began to diminish, at least privately, as
his relationship with Aylen blossomed. In their correspondence, the ageing Scott gave vent
to some frustration with his civil service career. As he travelled the country by train on
Department business in 1930, the love-struck sexagenarian Scott expressed frustration
with his efforts to balance the demands of the Department with his artistic pursuits. As he
headed west in the late autumn of 1930, Scott wrote a long letter to Aylen from Winnipeg
and Regina. In this epistle, Scott wrote about the tensions between his artistic bent and
his civil service job after meeting some ambitious prairie entrepreneurs, but steadied
himself with more characteristic resolve,
This business life would kill me, the men I meet all splendid fellows bent on
making money seem so far away from me, I can only tolerate the Dept at home by
forgetting it and living that other life, ineffective enough I suppose but more
natural. I have had time to read your two dear letters they made me very homesick
and dissatisfied wch was not the effect you intended. The written words are
sometimes as perverse & contrary as the spoken; not that the letters did not
[illegible word] of you in every line, they did, but they made me weary of myself
& what I am and what I ought to be. However this is a weakness that must be
overcome.86
Scott and Aylen were married in 1932, the year of Scott’s retirement. They
travelled extensively in Europe and throughout North America; and they settled into a
highly cultured life in Ottawa. Scott made almost no further mention of his Indian
86
Duncan Campbell Scott, letter to Elise Aylen, posted at Regina November 16, 1930. LAC-BAC, LMS0204, Box 1, Folder 4.
212
Department career. The house on Lisgar Street became a salon of sorts for writers,
painters and musicians.87
Aylen continued to write poetry, historical novels and, most remarkably, a play
based on D.H. Lawrence’s novel The Plumed Serpent.88 Lawrence’s work concerns the
love affair between a British tourist and a charismatic Indigenous leader who leads a
revolt rooted in aboriginal Mexican spirituality. The Plumed Serpent depicts the
twentieth-century Indigenous Mexican equivalent of political and religious practices
which were illegal under The Indian Act for aboriginals in Canada during Scott’s tenure
at the Department. The origins and inspiration of Aylen’s unpublished manuscript for a
play that was never produced, are murky. There is no record of a meeting or any
correspondence between Aylen and Lawrence; and Lawrence died in 1930 before Aylen
and Scott married.89 In 1939, Scott and Aylen travelled together to the American west.
Lawrence had lived at a ranch near Taos, New Mexico for part of the 1920s while he
made several extended trips to Mexico.90 Aylen’s adaptation of Lawrence’s novel,
although not precisely dated, was written while she was married to Scott and living on
Lisgar Street.
The fifteen years that Scott and Aylen had shared following his retirement were
busy with dedication to writing, the arts in general and travel throughout Canada, the
United States and Europe. Scott assumed the role of elder statesman of Canadian arts and
letters. As World War II ground to a close in Europe, Scott wrote to E.K. Brown, with
87
Gwyn, ; Titley, Narrow Vision, 28.
Elise Aylen, The Plumed Serpent, A Play in Three Acts. From the Novel by D.H. Lawrence, LAC-BAC,
LMS-0204, Box 7, Folder 8. The manuscript is undated, but the cover address is “Mrs. A.E. Scott, 108
Lisgar St.” Aylen lived in the house from her marriage to Scott in 1932 until his death in 1947.
89
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library.yorku.ca/view/article/34435 (accessed June 2013).
90
A very useful “Biographical Note” including a timeline of Scott’s life and times appears in Scott, Selected Poetry, v-viii.
88
213
whom he had collaborated on a Lampman collection, about Lawren Harris, a member of
the Group of Seven, who had just passed by Lisgar Avenue,
Lawren Harris was here yesterday just for a day, came in about half past four, had
a cup of tea, smoked two cigarettes, cleaned his picture which needed it badly,
had an animated talk, went into my bedroom at half after five, slept soundly for
three quarters of an hour and then was off to dinner and a meeting and the night
train to Toronto. Here is a man I admire greatly.91
Harris was but one of the painters who visited the Scott-Aylen home and whose work
was hung there.
Scott was one of the first Canadian establishment figures to embrace the work of
Emily Carr. Emily Carr had initially faced rejection for her effort to bring the sensibilities
of impressionist painting she had studied in Paris to West Coast Indigenous villages, and
the rain forests and seascapes of the north-west.92 She had been ridiculed in stern
Victoria, British Columbia, and initially rejected by the National Gallery in Ottawa.
Finally in 1927, Carr gained acceptance at age 56 when her canvasses were included in a
ground-breaking National Gallery of Canada exhibition, West Coast Art: Native and
Modern. In 1941, she sent two of her paintings to the Scott’s for their wedding
anniversary, “and also as a tribute to the beauty & pleasure Dr. Scott has given to Canada
through his poems.”93 The canvasses were eventually donated by Elise Aylen to The
National Gallery of Canada. In her correspondence with Scott, Carr expressed admiration
for his poems and wrote of her struggle in writing stories on Indian themes.94
91
Duncan Campbell Scott, letter to E.K. Brown, May 10-12, 1944. LAC-BAC, E.K. Brown
correspondence MG30 D61 Vol. 3
92
Michael Ostroff, director, Winds of Heaven: Emily Carr, Carvers and The Spirits of The Forest
(documentary film) (Toronto, Cine Metu in Co-production with White Pine Pictures, 2010)
93
Emily Carr letter to Duncan Campbell Scott and Elise Aylen, March 22, 1941. LAC-BAC, LMS-0204,
Box 10, Folder 31
94
Emily Carr, letters to Duncan Campbell Scott July 2 and August 24, 1941. LAC-BAC, LMS-0204, Box
10, Folder 31
214
The warm relationship between Carr and Scott has been overlooked in the
scholarship about them as individuals. As a painter, Carr is generally regarded as an artist
who synthesized Aboriginal themes in a respectful and haunting manner. Klee Wyck,
Carr’s 1941 book based on her observations of Indigenous communities in British
Columbia, won the Governor General’s Award for non-fiction in 1942.95 Carr is today
generally respected as an artist who had great sympathies with Aboriginal peoples, while
Scott is often a vilified character because of his association with Canadian Indian policy.
His friend Emily Carr, who regarded him as an inspiration, has not met a similar fate.
Scott also befriended the great Québécois landscape artist Clarence Gagnon
whose paintings Scott collected. The choice is fitting because Gagnon’s pastoral work set
in Québec mirrored the society that Scott described in his French Canadian stories, which
were among Scott’s first published work.96 Prior to joining the Canadian public service,
the adolescent Scott had attended Stanstead College in the Eastern Townships of Quebec
and had childhood associations with Quebec rural parishes that his father visited for his
clerical work.
In 1919, Scott came to Gagnon’s assistance in researching “native pigments”
Gagnon was considering using in his paintings.97 In 1921, Scott helped Gagnon
determine the origins of a tomahawk that Gagnon had found in the Quebec bush. In each
case, Scott referred the matter to the Anthropological Branch of the Geological Survey of
Canada. In the case of the tomahawk, Scott reported back to Gagnon that folklorist
95
The Canadian Encyclopedia http://thecanadianencyclopedia.com.ezproxy.library.yorku.ca/articles/emilycarr (accessed June 2013).
96
Duncan Campbell Scott, In the Village of Viger and Other Stories. New Canadian Library ; no. 92.
Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1973. Original publication (Boston: Copeland and Day, 1896)
97
Duncan Campbell Scott letter to Clarence Gagnon, February 8, 1919 and August 2, 1921. LAC-BAC,
LMS-0204, Box 11
215
Marius Barbeau had examined the tomahawk but could not provide a conclusive answer
about its history.98 A few days later, Scott sought a return favour in eliciting information
from Gagnon about accommodation in Paris, a city where Gagnon often lived,
We have not been in Paris since 1907. Can you give me a few addresses for small
hotels or pensions with reasonable rates? Don’t imagine that we want anything
extravagant because we don’t, something on the left bank, comfortable and
reasonable.99
Scott wrote six years later to Gagnon in Paris to congratulate the artist on his inclusion in a
major exhibition which put Canadian artists on an equal footing with the best French art
could offer in the 1920s.100 Scott’s keen interesting the world of visual art is further
confirmed by a letter from Gagnon in 1931 commenting in detail on the effect the
Depression was having on the prices of paintings.101
Despite their geographic differences, Carr was painting the north-west and
Gagnon was representing Laurentian landscapes, there is a common factor in their work:
both focused on landscape. Indian people, generally viewed either as mythologized
figures from the past or contemporaries of Scott in the process of acculturation, often
figured in Scott’s Indian poems; they were not present in the paintings he collected.
Despite her fascination with Native peoples, Carr’s British Columbian work is primarily
of the natural world without people. Gagnon’s villages and snow-covered vistas from
Quebec are similarly depopulated. Another of Scott’s painter friends, Lawren Harris, like
other Group of Seven members, often depicted regions of Ontario, such as the north shore
of Lake Superior and Algonquin Park which are inhabited by Algonquian peoples who
98
Duncan Campbell Scott letter to Clarence Gagnon, August 2, 1921. LAC-BAC, LMS-0204, Box 11
Duncan Campbell Scott letter to Clarence Gagnon, August 6, 1921. LAC-BAC, LMS-0204, Box 11
100
Duncan Campbell Scott letter to Clarence Gagnon, December 1, 1927. LAC-BAC, LMS-0204, Box 11
101
Clarence Gagnon letter to Duncan Campbell Scott, June 6, 1931. LAC-BAC, LMS-0204, Box 11
99
216
never appear in the paintings. Perhaps selection of such paintings for his home reflected
Scott’s own apparent lack of interest in Indigenous peoples following his retirement.
As we have seen earlier, Scott lived through the beginning of the electronic
communication. He was frequently involved with radio broadcasts in the early days of the
CBC. He contributed scripts and poetry to the fledgling national broadcaster. He was also
the subject of a feature commemorating his seventy-eighth birthday in 1944.102 Scott was
also involved in the early days of Canadian documentary filmmaking when the National
Film Board of Canada emerged as a producer of film propaganda during World War II.
During the World War I, Scott had written poems mourning a Canadian pilot and another
for the mothers of deceased Canadian soldiers.103 When World War II reached its end, the
elderly Scott was invited to contribute a poem to the National Film Board as part of the
narration for the production “A Salute To Victory”. National Film Commissioner John
Grierson wrote to acknowledge Scott’s contribution, “We have been honoured in this
association with a creative talent of which Canada has long had reason to be proud.”104
Grierson sent flowers along with his note. Scott acknowledged their receipt with
gratitude.105
Finally, Scott made a posthumous CBC appearance on air on January 16, 1948 as
part of a “National School Broadcast on Canadian Poets”. Scott had been recorded in late
102
Emily Carr listened to the broadcast in Victoria, British Columbia. Emily Carr, letters to Duncan
Campbell Scott, June 23, 1944. LAC-BAC, LMS-0204, Box 10, Folder 31
103
Scott, “To A Canadian Aviator Who Died for His Country in France”; “To the Canadian Mothers, 19141918” both poems appear Scott, Selected Poems of Duncan Campbell Scott with a Memoir by E.K. Brown
(Toronto: The Ryerson Press,1951), 169-71.
104
John Grierson, Government Film Commissioner, letter to Duncan Campbell Scott, May 10, 1945, LACBAC, LMS-0204, Box 11, Folder 37
105
Duncan Campbell Scott letter to John Grierson, May 15, 1945. LAC-BAC, LMS – 0204, Box 11, Folder
37.
217
1947 prior to his death that December. He was introduced to CBC listeners with the
following script,
In an old house in a quiet corner of Ottawa there lived, until within a few days of
last Christmas, a man who was the last member of a group of four celebrated
Canadian poets of a past generation. Duncan Campbell Scott, tall, grave-faced
gentle-voiced – more like a Bishop than a Poet. A man of affairs who had yet
found time to dream. A man rich in the experience of life, whose passing takes
much from Canadian poetry; a Poet whose going will be mourned by all lovers of
verse.
Two careers were his – that of Poet and high office in the Department of Indian
Affairs. His work took him into the wild north country, made him familiar with its
woodland and sky, rivers and streams – and above all, its Red Man.106
Scott is heard briefly in the broadcast. It is the only recording of his voice extant. A frail,
aged, thin-voiced poet reads a few lines billed as “a message for the children of Canada”.
Scott ended his brief performance with the following couplet,
If you be in search of Beauty,
Go where Beauty dwells.107
Elise Aylen sold the house on Lisgar Street and left Canada forever within a year
of Scott’s death. Eventually she would settle at an ashram in India where she died in
1972.108 In the weeks following Scott’s death, the grieving Aylen wrote to the family
friend and Scott’s co-editor of Lampman poetry, E.K. Brown,
Dear Edward,
Thank you and Peggy so much for your kind word of sympathy. I am sorry to
have been so long in answering. I have written about fifty letters already, but all
more or less formal ones. Somehow that seemed easier to me than the more
106
Letter from R.S. Lambert, Supervisor of Educational Broadcasts,CBC to Mrs. Duncan Campbell Scott
(Elise Aylen), December 31, 1947. Lambert sent Aylen a copy of the script as a courtesy prior to broadcast.
LAC-BAC Correspondence CBC May 5 1939 – February 11, 1948.
- Recording of the National Schools Broadcast, January 16, 1948. LAC-BAC, V1 2000-02-0009 (ISN
108498) CD 8065 (1)
107
Letter from R.S. Lambert, Supervisor of Educational Broadcasts,CBC to Mrs. Duncan Campbell Scott
(Elise Aylen), December 31, 1947. Lambert sent Aylen a copy of the script as a courtesy prior to broadcast.
LAC-BAC Correspondence CBC May 5 1939 – February 11, 1948.
108
Some of Aylen’s works and ephemera about her life are stored in
LAC-BAC, LMS-0204, Box 7, Folder 8; Box 9, Folders 5 and 8. The bulk of the correspondence between
Aylen and Scott is in Box 1 in the same fonds.
218
personal ones. To write those who are our friends, and were close to us, costs one
more. I still feel half dazed and wholly exhausted, and the dreadful pain and pity
of his illness is still in possession of my mind. I wake up at night calling for the
nurse, before I can realize the way things are. And when I look about the house
and do not see him, I feel like a swimmer in deep water – I keep trying to find
something solid to stand on and there seems to be nothing beneath me but an
infinite depth. Perhaps it is as well that it is necessary for me to rent the house at
once. I am already packing up and will leave as soon as I can find a tenant.109
Jacques Soustelle returned to France in 1968 from self-exile after his falling out
with de Gaulle. Following the student revolt in France of May 1968, Soustelle took
advantage of a general amnesty offered by the de Gaulle government to return. While he
had been pursued and carefully monitored by French intelligence because he was
suspected of plotting against de Gaulle, Soustelle was not apprehended, and even briefly
returned clandistinely to France, during his seven years abroad.110 Upon his 1968 return,
he resumed a very active public life engaged with academic, political and publishing
activities, his reputation tarnished by his impolitic opposition to Algerian independence
which had been achieved in the Evian Accords of 1962.111
In the last decades of his life, respect for Soustelle’s writing and his broad
connaissance of Mexico had a mitigating effect on the almost overwhelmingly negative
assessment of his role in Algerian-French conflict. The fascination with Mexico that had
inspired the graduate student prodigy endured. Les quatre soleils, his meditation on
ethnological practice and the rise and fall of civilizations as seen through the prism of
Mexico, was greeted with critical enthusiasm by academics and journalists.112 Soustelle
109
Elise Aylen, letter to E.K. Brown, January 12, 1948. LAC-BAC, E.K. Brown correspondence, MG 30
D61 Vol 3, Folder: Scott, Elise Aylen.
110
Bernard Ullmann, Jacques Soustelle – Le Mal aimé (Paris: Plon, 1995), 319-48.
111
Ibid, 363-89.
112
Jacques Soustelle, Les quatre soleils : L’itinéraire intellectuel de Jacques Soustelle, ethnographe du
Mexique terre indienne (Paris: Plon, 1967). Positive reviews included Charles Melchior-Bonnet, Historia,
219
had written most of it in various libraries and apartments in Italy, Switzerland and
Belgium during his self-imposed exile just prior to returning to France. The book’s
publication served as a reminder of Soustelle’s preeminent status among European savants
whatever his role in the Algerian-French conflict had been. The clarity and broad appeal
of his writing style made Soustelle a sought after authority on subjects concerning the
Mexican past. He worked as a writer and presenter on documentary films about Mexico
made for national French television audiences. His on-air style was quite effective, even
energetic, as he strode through jungles in Chiapas, ascended the steps of ruined temples, or
performed long, elegantly written stand-ups in the exhibit rooms of the
National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City.113 With the election of centre-right
president Valery Giscard d’Estaing, Soustelle was given the task of reviewing France’s
system of post-secondary education in the social sciences.114 He proffered a ringing
argument for funding of French research in disciplines including archaeology,
anthropology and ethnology. As he and Paul Rivet had asserted in the 1930s with their
writings and the establishment of le Musée de l’homme, Soustelle continued to believe
that a lively milieu of French academic programs and public institutions dedicated to the
social sciences should be national priorities. Re-established as a professor at l’Université
de Paris, Soustelle supervised numerous doctoral candidates after his 1968 return.115
February, 1968 ; Lucien Guissard, “Les Quatre Soleils : un voyage philosophique”, La Croix, October 22,
1967 ; L.L., “Un livre essentiel, “ La Cité, November 22-23 1969.
113
Soustelle, producer and commentary and Marcel Boudo, director, La Splendeur
Du Mexique Ancien - Les Azteques (3 Parties), (Paris and Mexico City: France 3 and Televisa, 1978); Other
TV productions featuring Soustelle include Chilam Balam, commentary by Jacques Soustelle (Paris: France
2, 1981; Les Mayas (3 parts), commentary by Jacques Soustelle (Paris: TF1, 1976).
114
Jacques Soustelle, Rapport Sur La Recherche Française En Archéologie Et Anthropologie (Paris: La
Documentation française, 1975).
115
Ullmann, mal aimé, 390-4.
220
Although his standing as a Latin American expert was re-affirmed, Soustelle
remained a political undesirable. He never escaped from the dark shadow of his thinking
and actions about the Algerian question. Assumptions of his association with
l’Organisation armée secrète (OAS) were reliably established in 1995 with the
publication of Bernard Ullmann’s biography.116 Ullmann proved that Soustelle had
participated in planning an assassination attempt against Charles de Gaulle. He also
established that there were no direct links between Soustelle and OAS acts of violence
against civilians. As if the Algerian matter was insufficient to sully his name, Soustelle
further complicated his reputation by taking unfashionable stands in defense of Israel and
the South African government in the dying days of apartheid. As with l’Algérie française,
Soustelle was adamant in his defense of Israel and South Africa. Soustelle believed that a
Zionist government could only reach an accommodation with Palestinian moderates and
that the final administrations of apartheid-era South Africa would achieve a democratic
accommodation with the African National Congress only when and if the ANC and its
allies abandoned all violent activities.117 Soustelle’s qualified redemption in the eyes of
the French élite was complete in 1984 when he was named to l’Académie française
despite the opposition of loyal Gaullists and the left.118 Soustelle died in 1990 at 68 years
of age.119
Conclusion
In the twenty-first century, Duncan Campbell Scott’s poetry still provides a means
to understand late and post-Victorian conceptions of Indigenousness that were prevalent
116
Ibid,
Jacques Soustelle, “Ou veut-on venir à Pretoria?” Le Monde, December 3, 1977; Jacques Soustelle, La
Longue Marche d’Israel, (Paris : Librairie Arthème Fayard, 1968) ; Ullmann, mal aimé, 363-7.
118
Ullmann, mal aimé, 400-4.
119
Ibid, 408-9.
117
221
among the elite of an emerging Canadian nation-state. Scott’s profound interest in visual
art, his involvement with the theatre both at Ottawa’s Little Theatre and at Hart House in
Toronto as well as ongoing musical interests were perhaps not uncommon for a deeply
cultured senior civil servant. In Scott’s case, these pursuits, which bespeak an
appreciation of a broad swath of the humanities, must be juxtaposed with his Indian
Department activities which in the 1920s were an expression of Canadian coercive
assimilation at its apogee, with Scott acting as its most powerful administrator and
spokesperson.
Jacques Soustelle’s ethnological oeuvre enjoys a higher reputation in its field
today than Scott’s poems and poetry do in Canadian letters.120 Broadly speaking,
Soustelle’s social scientific work, and his reputation, survive due to his central role in the
reformation of French ethnology in the 1930s and because his Mexican works remain
eminently readable and accessible to a broad audience located largely in Europe and
North America.
120
See Durand-Forest , Baudot and Soustelle, Mille ans de civilisation Mésoaméricaine.
222
6. Politics
Introduction
Aujourd'hui la partie est jouée ; l’humanité est nationale; le laïc a gagné. Mais son
triomphe passe tout ce qu’il pouvait croire. Le clerc n’est pas seulement vaincu, il
est assimilé. L’homme de science, l’artiste, le philosophe sont attaches à leur
nation autant que le laboureur ou le marchand;… 1
- Julien Benda In 1927, Julien Benda skewered the spirit of his intellectual times in a slim, but
ground-breaking, work published in Paris, La Trahison des clercs (The Betrayal of The
Intellectuals, or The Great Betrayal.)2 Benda produced his work in the aftermath of the
horrors of World War I. He predicted that nationalism, fuelled, in his view, by a trahison
of artists, scientists, clergy and educators – the thinking class that Benda held accountable
for popular attitudes – would inevitably lead to another global conflict. The rise of
fascism and the outbreak of World War II gave Benda’s masterwork the patina of
prophecy.
Benda wrote at a time when Duncan Campbell Scott was at the height of his
powers in the Canadian Indian Department and when Jacques Soustelle was beginning
his meteoric rise in French academic life. Benda believed that in the modern era the
primary legacy of both Greek philosophy and of the enlightenment – independent and
challenging free thinking - had been bent to the service of the nation. In this chapter I
shall explore how Scott and Soustelle were each instruments of national policies and of
an idealized conception of the state that trumped ethical concerns. In their duty both Scott
1
Julien Benda, La Trahison des clercs (Paris: Les Cahiers Verts, 1927), 222
Benda, The Treason of the Intellectuals, translated by Richard Aldington (New York: W. Morrison, 1928
also New York: Norton, 1969); Benda, The Great Betrayal (London: G. Routledge & Sons Ltd., 1928).
2
223
and Soustelle sometimes betrayed ideals that were the supposed foundation of the nations
they were called to serve.
Scott’s ‘trahison’ was to repress what he otherwise considered universal
principles of liberal political development and human rights to departmental policy. As a
literary artist, Scott espoused widely held views of intellectual progress and the liberal
political development his young country.3 As a ‘clerc’ Scott employed his intellect,
ambition and skill to a ‘narrow vision’ (to borrow E. Brian Titley’s turn of phrase) of
Canadian Indian administration that vitiated human rights.4 Scott determined that Indian
policy would help forge a national identity. That identity was constructed in a narrow
British tradition despite the presence of Aboriginal peoples and the arrival of many nonBritish immigrant communities, languages and cultures in the new nation of Canada.
France’s anguish over the Algerian question consumed Jacques Soustelle’s
energies for more than a decade; his role in the Algerian-French conflict continues to
define him significantly in the twenty-first century. The drama of Algerian independence
and the bitter struggle among the French over Algeria became personal in the battle
between Charles de Gaulle and his one-time acolyte and political dauphin, Soustelle. In
the era following World War II as a global process of de-colonization began, Soustelle
was placed on the frontlines of that struggle when named Governor General of Algeria in
early 1955. Soustelle was prepared for Algeria both as an ethnographer and as a résistant
who had served de Gaulle and the Free France movement in Mexico, London and Algeria
The theme of progress is an undercurrent in much of Scott’s poetic and prose work. He enunciated his
own view on the subject most clearly in an address to the Royal Society of Canada in 1922. Duncan
Campbell Scott, “Poetry and Progress” in Scott, Leslie Ritchie, ed. introduction by Stan Dragland
Addresses, Essays, and Reviews Vol 1 (London, Ont.: Canadian Poetry Press, 2000). Also re-published in
Dragland, Duncan Campbell Scott: A Book of Criticism (Ottawa: The Tecumseh Press, 1974, 7-30.
4
E. Brian Titley, A Narrow Vision: Duncan Campbell Scott and the Administration of Indian Affairs in
Canada (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1986)
3
224
during World War II. As an intellectual, Soustelle’s appointment represented a last ditch
attempt by France to lever Soustelle’s academic background and specialized knowledge
of Indigenous peoples to drive an ambitious but belated set of reforms.5 Ultimately, as his
short tenure as Governor General wound down, Soustelle chose to defend French
militarization of the conflict and to oversee the implementation of repressive measures.
Under extreme circumstances, testing the strength of democratic institutions in
Republican France, Soustelle was fired from de Gaulle’s cabinet and then embarked on a
campaign in exile to reverse the course of history over Algerian independence.6
Overview of Scott and Soustelle
In his lifetime, Duncan Campbell Scott incarnated pervasive, profoundly mixed,
often contradictory and confused beliefs over the question of aboriginal peoples in
Canada. Scott’s role in the drama encompassed direct responsibility for the establishment
and management of residential schools; for the suppression of Indigenous expressions of
spirituality; and for the Canadian government’s hostile response to early twentiethcentury efforts by Indigenous peoples to engage in political mobilization and to organize
themselves over fundamental legal questions concerning title to ‘Indian’ lands in Canada.
Scott played a principal role in all of these matters.7 At the time of writing, Canada’s
complicity in the deaths of thousands of aboriginal children under its care in residential
5
Jacques Soustelle, Aimée et souffrante Algérie (Paris: Plon, 1956), 5-7;Alistair Horne, A Savage War of
Peace: Algeria, 1954-1962 (New York: Viking Press, 1978), 105-7; Todd Shepard, "How Ethnographic
Research in 1930s Mexico Shaped French Efforts to Fight Algerian Nationalism in 1955." Paper delivered
at UNESCO conference, Cambridge, April 6-7, 2009: 2-8.
6
Horne, Savage War, 341, 473;Bernard Ullmann, Jacques Soustelle le mal aimé (Paris: Plon, 1995), 292-8.
7
See for example John Sheridan Milloy, A National Crime: The Canadian Government and the Residential
School System, 1879-1986 (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 1999), 70, 87-8, 94-5, 109, 149-50;
Titley, Narrow Vision, 48-51, 90-93, 142-61 Katherine Pettipas, Severing the Ties that Bind: Government
Repression of Indigenous Religious Ceremonies on the Prairies (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press,
1994), 123-4, 146-7, 164-5.
225
schools during the period Scott served the Indian Department at the highest level is under
investigation by a Truth and Reconciliation Commission.8
As a senior civil servant who worked for both Conservative and Liberal
governments, Scott’s actions are representative of a consensus about Indian policy shared
by Canadian elites. Historian Ian McKay has characterized Scott as one of the “organic
intellectuals” at the core of Canada’s early twentieth-century civilizing thrust into the
Canadian west and north.9 McKay correctly positions Scott, whom he describes as “the
brilliant fin-de-siècle poet-administrator”, as a critical figure among Canadian cultural
and political figures who merit reconsideration in aid of a reconnaissance of Canadian
history.10 McKay’s instructive work on the Canadian liberal order framework challenges
Canadian historians to look beyond the “inevitability and goodness” of Canada and to
ponder alternative overarching models of Canadian history,
..this stance means taking much more seriously than is conventionally the case the
Canadian liberals themselves – as coherent and rigorous proponents of a
continent-wide transformation of society, inheritors of a great intellectual tradition
which they then articulated to the vast heterogeneous terrain they sought to
understand and to transform.11
In McKay’s rejection of Canadian “inevitability and goodness,” he correctly
targets the centrality of Indian policy as a defining manifestation of the project of
Canadian nationhood in the critical period from the inception of the process that led to
confederation and the conclusion of World War II, roughly 1850 to 1945,
8
Website for Truth and Reconciliation Canada http://www.trc.ca/websites/trcinstitution/index.php?p=3
First accessed January 2012; Bill Curry and Karen Howlatt, "Natives Died in Droves as Ottawa Ignored
Warnings." The Globe and Mail, April 24, 2007, First section.
9
Ian McKay, "The Liberal Order Framework: A Prospectus for a Reconnaissance of Canadian History."
Canadian Historical Review 81, no. 4 (Dec. 2000): 617-51; McKay, “Canada as a Long Liberal
Revolution” in Liberalism and Hegemony: Debating the Canadian Liberal Revolution, Jean-François
Constant and Michel Ducharme (Toronto-Buffalo-London: University of Toronto Press, 2009), 347-452.
10
I McKay, “Long Liberal Revolution,” 381.
11
McKay, “Long Liberal Revolution,” 353.
226
That the country was (an in some respects still is) a ‘white settlers’ dominion’,
whose predominant political, legal and religious systems were imposed on its
indigenous inhabitants, is an underlying assumption of the liberal order
framework.12
Duncan Campbell Scott’s role in Canadian Indian policy gives proof to McKay’s
assertion about Canadian liberals, “The burden of responsibility for the most glaring
offences against “Liberal democracy” must be born by liberals themselves.”13
In the emerging Canadian state the relationship between a newly dominant
national governing cohort dominated by non-Aboriginals and the Aboriginal groups
residing in the wake and at the margins of a rapidly developing settler society was
foundational and defining. Scott spent his bureaucratic career at the heart of the
machinery of Canadian Indian policy during this crucial period. His legacy, and that of
the explicitly assimilatory era of Canadian Indian policy, remain a matter of fundamental
importance for Canadian historians and political theorists.14
Jacques Soustelle’s involvement in the Franco-Algerian drama coincided with the
post-World War II ascendancy of existential philosophy. In his intellectual combat over
the future of French Algeria Soustelle was engaged directly and rhetorically with two
leaders of French existentialism, the novelist-playwright-essayist Albert Camus and the
philosopher-novelist-playwright-political activist Jean-Paul Sartre.
Albert Camus was an Algerian of European background. The Franco-Algerian
conflict caused him great political and personal anguish. His opposition to Algerian
McKay, “Long Liberal Revolution,” 361.
McKay, Rebels, Reds, Radicals: Rethinking Canada's Left History (Toronto: Between the Lines, 2005),
89.
14
See as examples McKay, "Liberal Order,” 626-7, 640, 644; John Ralston Saul, A Fair Country:Telling
Truths about Canada (Toronto: Viking, 2008); Dale Turner, “Liberalism’s Last Stand; Aboriginal
Sovereignty and Minority Rights” in Curtis Cook and Juan David Lindau eds, Aboriginal Rights and SelfGovernment : The Canadian and Mexican Experience in North American Perspective (Montreal: McGillQueen's University Press, 2000), 51-68.
12
13
227
independence and his denunciation of terror tactics employed by both sides in the conflict
made Camus an isolated figure among French intellectuals of the period.15 As we shall
see, his isolation was shared, to some extent, by Jacques Soustelle, and to a considerable
extent, by Soustelle’s fellow ethnographer Germaine Tillion.
Jean-Paul Sartre stood on the other side of a bitter divide between French
intellectuals.16 Sartre advocated Algerian independence and embraced violent revolution
and even terror tactics of the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) as a legitimate
response to the violence of more than 125 years of French colonial rule in Algeria.17 The
high stakes debate over the Algerian conflict among French intellectuals, and the
sometimes extreme responses of Soustelle in that drama, provide a case study of the
comportment of intellectuals caught in pressurized political situations and military
conflicts. Soustelle’s role during the period he served as Governor General has been
overshadowed to some extent by his notorious opposition to President de Gaulle’s choice
to surrender Algeria. In this chapter, my interests are focused on Soustelle’s reform
program as Governor General, which was inspired significantly by his experiences in
Mexico, and by his response to increasingly violent resistance to French rule during his
administration. I am fascinated by the widely shared observation that Soustelle’s
15
See Albert Camus, Actuelles III Chroniques Algériennes 1939-1958 (Paris: Gallimard, 1958) This is an
essential compendium of Camus’ journalism and political essays on the Algerian question.
16
See Raoul Girardet, L'Idée Coloniale En France De 1871 à 1962 (Paris: La table ronde, 1972), 218-9;
Roger Navarri, “Sartre et la névrose « algérienne, » in Philippe Baudorre ed., La Plume Dans La Plaie: Les
Écrivains Journalistes Et La Guerre d'Algérie (Bordeaux: Presses universitaires de Bordeaux, 2003), 13748; Horne, Savage War, 237-8; See also James D. Le Sueur, “Decolonizing ‘French Universalism’
Reconsidering the impact of the Algerian War on French Intellectuals,” in Le Sueur, ed. The Decolonizing
Reader (London: Rutledge, 2003), 103-117; Le Sueur, Uncivil War: Intellectuals and Identity Politics
during the Decolonization of Algeria (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001); Ronald
Aronson, Camus & Sartre: The Story of a Friendship and the Quarrel that Ended it (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 2004).
17
See Jean-Paul Sartre, Situations V, Colonialisme et néo-colonialisme (Paris: Gallimard, 1964)
This collection includes a number of articles which outline Sartre’s views on the Algerian question, perhaps
most importantly his introduction to Les Damnés de la terre, the eponymous 1961 text of Frantz Fanon.
228
reformist zeal was squelched by the realities of war.18 To what extent did Soustelle, while
Governor General, betray his own principals in defence of the French position in Algeria?
The Question of Politics
Duncan Campbell Scott’s role in Canadian Indian policy also poses discomforting
questions for the intellectual historian. Was Scott personally culpable for Canadian Indian
policy during a period through which most historical observers agree the Canadian state
systematically violated the basic human rights of Aboriginal peoples in Canada? Unlike
Soustelle, who was clearly exceptional in so many regards, the problem of Duncan
Campbell Scott unsettles the historical curiosity in no small part because, as Hannah
Arendt famously observed of Albert Eichmann, Scott, although he became a government
mandarin and leading cultural figure, was in some respects, “terribly and terrifyingly
normal.”19 My intent is not to equate Canadian Indian policy with Nazism, but in
Arendt’s journalistic account of the Eichmann trial and her highly articulated (and
vigorously contested) portrayal of Eichmann’s “banality,” she raised broader questions
about individual responsibility and accountability of bureaucrats under the rule of wrongminded government.20 In that respect, Arendt’s analysis is fundamental to a consideration
of Scott, and others like him, the accomplished and, in some aspects of their lives, even
laudable, executors of Canadian Indian policy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries.
This chapter looks at Scott and Soustelle at moments of political exigency. My
approach is deliberately selective, focussing on specific incidents and related archival
18
Bernard Droz and Évelyne Lever, Histoire De La Guerre d'Algérie (1954-1962 (Paris: Seuil, 1982), 745; Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace: Algeria, 1954-1962 (New York: Viking Press, 1978), 117.
19
Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem (New York: Penguin Group, 1963), 276
20
Ibid, 252
229
evidence. It highlights, compares, contrasts and juxtaposes certain episodes that reveal
aspects of Scott’s and Soustelle’s behaviour under defining, conflicted political
circumstances.
Canadian historiography about the Indian Department has developed greatly in
the past 25 years.21 The chapter does not provide a general overview of Scott’s
complicity in a wide range of department policies, but to carefully observe his defence of
specific initiatives he launched to enhance departmental control over Indian education and
so-called enfranchisement, the policy by which Canadian Indians could surrender their
aboriginal or treaty rights in order to gain full Canadian citizenship.22
Many eminent historians and journalists have looked in great detail at the FrancoAlgerian conflict in the period surrounding Soustelle’s tenure as Governor General in
1955-6.23 This chapter will not repeat that narrative. The chapter considers Soustelle’s
performance as Governor General in light of his training and experience as an ethnologist
and veteran résistant with formative experiences in Mexico of the 1930s and 1940s. This
formation made Soustelle an unparalleled representative of the French intellectual class
thought suited to take on the governorship of a teetering Algeria. Soustelle’s nomination
by a French centre-left government to the role of Governor General in late 1954,
seconded by his war-time commander de Gaulle, make him a classic case of a clerc
leaping eagerly to the service of his nation in dubious circumstances to serve a poorly
articulated cause.
21
See bibliography for works including those by Robin Jarvis Brownlie, Sarah Carter, Olive Patricia
Dickason, J.R. Miller, John S. Milloy and E. Brian Titley.
22
Titley, Narrow Vision, 4, 9, 12, 13, 34, 44, 48-51, 90, 104-7, 114-16, 203.
23
For respected and literate overviews of the Algerian conflict, see Charles-Robert Ageron, Histoire De
l'Algérie Contemporaine (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1979); Yves Courrière, La Guerre
d'Algérie (Paris: Fayard, 2001); Bernard Droz et Évelyne Lever. Histoire De La Guerre d'Algérie (19541962) (Paris: Seuil, 1982); Horne, Savage War; Alain-Gérard Slama, La Guerre d'Algérie: Histoire d'Une
Déchirure (Paris: Gallimard, 1996).
230
Duncan Campbell Scott: Tightening the Vise of Canadian Indian Policy
Duncan Campbell Scott’s role in Indian Department business can be interpreted in
many ways. Was Scott an artist simply too dulled by duty to sift through the implications
of Departmental policy? It is a plausible explanation. Was he merely ‘following orders’
when it came to the grinding gears of the Canadian Indian policy mechanism? Or was he
inspired by a keen ideological desire to see that the assimilation program could be made
ever more effective?
E.K. Brown elicited perhaps the most direct comment that Scott ever offered
about his work at the Indian Department,
Your remarks about the Indian poems are very good. I had for about twenty years
oversight of their development and I was never unsympathetic to aboriginal ideals,
but there was the law which I did not originate and which I never tried to amend in
the direction of severity. One can hardly be sympathetic to the contemporary sundance or Potlatch when one knows that the original spirit has departed and they
are largely the opportunities for debauchery by low white men.24
Scott wrote the words above to Brown in 1941, some nine years after his retirement from
the civil service and six years prior to his death. He was 71 years old. Scott was
cooperating with Brown’s efforts to compile his work for Canadian literary posterity.
Brown, a Canadian academic, critic and friend of Scott admired many of the ‘Indian’
poems. In the letter, Scott expresses a widely held late Victorian conviction that, sadly,
much of the best of the Native had vanished, and that a speedy, if sometimes rough
transition to civilization was required; indeed, as Scott’s letter suggests, in his mind even
the best of Aboriginal practice and belief had been tarnished, so what was the point of
preserving anything?
24
Duncan Campbell Scott, letter to E.K. Brown July 2, 1941. In Duncan Campbell Scott, E. K. Brown, and
Robert L. McDougall. The Poet and the Critic: A Literary Correspondence between D.C. Scott and E.K.
Brown (Ottawa; Don Mills, Ont.: Carleton University Press; Distributed by Oxford University Press
Canada, 1983),25-26.
231
Attitudes of resignation about the moral decline of Aboriginal tradition were
indeed widely shared by elite Canadians of the day. The question of personal
responsibility is where the debate surrounding Scott is less settled. In the letter, Scott
claims, “there was the law which I did not originate and which I never tried to amend in
the direction of severity.” This defence is not entirely tenable in light of the evidence. E.
Brian Titley’s evidence of instances in which Scott, in his capacity as a senior civil
servant, participated in making the Indian Act more stringent.25 This chapter examines
Scot’s actions in the areas of enfranchisement, Aboriginal spiritual practice, compulsory
education, and the Indian Department’s response to First Nations’ political resistance.26
Scott, both as a literary artist and as a functionary of the Canadian state, is perhaps
the clearest and arguably the most prolific spokesperson for Canadian liberalism’s
tortuous, often contradictory, efforts to deal with the ‘Indian question’. Such ideology
fails the test of its own deluded logic. The massive project of social engineering directed
at aboriginal peoples, that critical plank in the liberal order framework, was based on the
twin principals of removal and integration. As cultural theorist and literary scholar Stan
Dragland has asserted, these mutually exclusive aspirations do not dovetail
in reality.27
One can ascribe to Scott his share of responsibility and intention in the broad
pattern of Canadian Indian policy in its most determined social engineering phase. Some
25
Titley, Narrow Vision, 104-7, 114-16, 156-59. Titley interview in Duncan Campbell Scott; The Poet and
the Indians - documentary film, James Cullingham, producer/director (Toronto: Tamarack Productions and
The National Film Board of Canada Ontario Centre, 1995).
26
J. R. Miller, Shingwauk's Vision: A History of Native Residential Schools (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 1996); John Sheridan Milloy, A National Crime : The
Canadian Government and the Residential School System, 1879-1986 (Winnipeg:
University of Manitoba Press, 1999); E. Brian Titley, A Narrow Vision: Duncan Campbell Scott and the
Administration of Indian Affairs in Canada (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1986).
26
Stan Dragland interview in The Poet and the Indians, Cullingham, dir/prod.
27
Ibid.
232
of his contemporaries took note of the artist’s political bent. E.K. Brown proffered the
following assessment,
He was not a party-minded man – he preferred the Conservatives to the Liberals
mainly because they were sounder in all that had to do with the British connection
– but in his own round of activity he had an acute political sense. He knew how to
defend the interests of the department when it came into conflict with others, and
his own interest within the department. His conception of the national duty to the
Indians was simple and sound. It was the result not of close ethnological study,
but of immense experience and imaginative understanding. The poet in him and
the civil servant agreed in believing that the future of the Indians, if it were not to
be in extinction or degradation, depended on their being brought more and more
nearly to the status of the white population. Special safeguards were a temporary
necessity; but meanwhile by education and encouragement the Indians were to
cease being interesting exotic relics and practise trying to hold their own in a
society which could not be bent in their direction. Sometimes Duncan Scott felt
that he should stress the special safeguards, the peculiar status, but it was to the
end of bringing Indians into the national society that he strove with that mixture of
guile and idealism that is the mark of the highest sort of civil servant.28
Brown presented Scott as a determined, individualistic, experienced civil servant of
sufficient capacity to see that the pre-existing policies of the Department were honed and
firmed up to make them more effective. Similarly, the literary critic L.P. Weiss saw at
least a striving for intellectual consistency in the policies that Scott was charged to
implement,
Like a significant number of his contemporaries in Canada, Scott accepted current
Victorian concepts of history and change. Because he believed in the necessity
and inevitability of change – what he and his fellow English Canadians called
“progress” – he was able to view the death of Indian culture as beneficial to
individual Indians.29
E.K. Brown, “Duncan Campbell Scott: A Memoir”, in E.K.Brown, Responses and Evaluations: Essays
on Canada, Edited by David Staines (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1977), 127. Also in Scott, Selected
Poems of Duncan Campbell Scott, Brown ed., (Toronto: The Ryerson Press, 1951), xxv-vi.
29
L.P. Weiss, “D.C. Scott’s View of History & The Indians”, Canadian Literature (Number 111, Winter
1986), 28.
28
233
Such opinions stand in stark contrast to others who have attributed to Scott personal
culpability in a malevolent Canadian Indian policy.30 My purpose here is to weigh these
possibilities in an “effort of reconnaissance” as prescribed by McKay. I do not espouse a
view that would make of Scott a singular exception to Canadian values. As McKay
explains, Duncan Campbell Scott was a comprehensible and intellectually consistent
product of Canadian liberalism that put pride of place in individual property rights,
limited forms of democratic practice, westward expansion and the supremacy of
arrogated white-male-English-speaking Canadian mores in the first half century of
nationhood.
Scott and Bill 14
Our object is to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not
been absorbed into the body politic, and there is no Indian question, and no Indian
Department, that is the whole object of this Bill.31
While the proposed legislation is radical, it gives the department control, removes
from the Indian parent the responsibility for the care and education of his child,
and the best interests of the Indians are promoted and protected. The clauses may
apply to every Indian child over the age of 7 and under the age of 15.32
Duncan Campbell Scott wrote these words in support of a 1920 bill to amend The
Indian Act which emanated from the Union government of then prime minister Arthur
Meighen. It was ardently championed by Scott who appeared before a parliamentary
committee in its defence. This was a critical juncture in the most coercive phase of
Departmental policy and a defining moment in the tenure of Scott as Deputy
30
Christopher Bracken, The Potlatch Papers: A Post Colonial History (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1997), 218-224.
31
Duncan Campbell Scott, transcript of testimony before Special Parliamentary Committee on Proposed
Changes to Indian Act, April 1920. LAC/BAC RG10 Vol 6810, file 470-2-3 Pt.7, 63.
32
Duncan Campbell Scott briefing notes regarding compulsory education for appearance at Parliamentary
Committee, 1920. LAC/BAC RG10 Vol 6810, file 470-2-3 Pt.7
234
Superintendent General.33 The specific provisions regarding the toughening of compulsory
enfranchisement were subsequently repealed by a government led by Liberal William
Lyon Mackenzie King.34 Notwithstanding that change, a rare defeat for a policy
specifically advocated by Scott, other draconian measures regarding compulsory
attendance at Indian schools survived. The Department’s obsession with enfranchisement
endured until revisions of the Indian Act in 1951 and was further quieted by John
Diefenbaker’s Bill of Rights which finally granted voting privileges to Indians residing
on reserves in 1961. Whatever the ultimate legislative fate of draconian Indian
Department policy on matters such as enfranchisement and compulsory attendance at
residential schools, Scott’s advocacy for Bill 14 at the mid-point of his administrative
stewardship of the Indian Department provides a clear window on his comportment as a
pro-active, ideologically driven mandarin.
In Scott’s own briefing notes in preparation for his various defences of the
proposed changes to involuntary enfranchisement and education provisions in Bill 14, he
correctly identified enfranchisement and compulsory school attendance as sources of
potential controversy. Indian enfranchisement was a central intent of the liberal,
“civilizing” Canadian policy. Enfranchisement in the Department’s view meant that
Indians could gain full Canadian citizenship rights in return for surrendering their status
as Indians. At various times since confederation, enfranchisement was required of
Indians in order to serve in the military, join certain professions or engage in some
individual business practices.35 The policy was applied haphazardly, but its underlying
33
Titley, Narrow Vision, 104-117.
Ibid, 118.
35
John Leslie and Ron MacGuire, eds. The Historical Development of The Indian Act (Ottawa: Indian and
Northern Affairs Canada, 1978); Indian Acts and Amendments (Ottawa: Indian and Northern Affairs
34
235
‘civilizing’ intent was clear. Scott’s brief on enfranchisement underscores the
fundamental role he envisaged for a more stringent policy in meeting the Department’s
primary aim of assimilation,
…we must come to the heart of the subject and provide legislation which will carry
out the ultimate aims and objects of the policy which has governed the
administration of this Department since Confederation. It is illogical to develop a
policy, spend money on it, and achieve results without possessing ourselves of the
power to make a final disposition of the individuals who have been civilized and
to despatch them into the ordinary life of the country with the knowledge they
have every chance to succeed. 36
In his appeal to the parliamentary committee set up to examine Bill 14, Scott revealed
that the determination of the Canadian government to “enfranchise” Indians had met with
overwhelming failure since confederation. An Indian Department memo for the committee
reveal that only 102 Indians had volunteered for enfranchisement in the 53 years since
Confederation.37 Earlier changes to The Indian Act in 1918 had sped the process up, but
insufficiently. The Departmental memo as well as well as Scott in his testimony declared
that an additional 97 families totalling 258 individuals had applied for enfranchisement in
the two years prior to the submission of Bill 14. 38 Still the rate of voluntary
enfranchisement did not satisfy Scott. The 1920 amendments allowed the
Canada, 1981); Wendy Moss and Elaine Gardner-O’Toole, “Aboriginal People: History of Discriminatory
Laws,” Ottawa, Library of Parliament: Law and Government Division, November 1987, Revised
November 1991. See also John Leslie and Ron Maguire, eds., researched by Robert G. Moore, “The
Historical Development of The Indian Act,” Treaties and Historical Research Centre, Research Branch,
Corporate Policy, Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, Government of Canada, 2nd edition, 1978. 1st
Edition 1975 written by Kahn-Tineta Miller and George Lerchs.
36
Duncan Campbell Scott, notes on “Enfranchisement”, 3. These notes were prepared in early 1920 in
anticipation of Parliamentary Committee hearings on proposed changes to The Indian Act. These notes are
in a file with a letter from Scott written on April 14, 1920 to Member of Parliament E.B. Devlin,. Scott
wrote, “I have the pleasure in inclosing herewith a copy of the notes I used when before the Committee on
Bill 14 a short time ago, and which I send you. I shall be glad to have them returned, as I require them for
reference.” LAC/BAC, RG10 Vol6810, file 470-2-3 Pt. 7. (also Microfiche reel C8533)
37
“Statement showing number of Indians enfranchised under section 122A.,” Ottawa, January 9, 1920.
LAC-BAC RG10 VOL 6810, file 470-2-3. (also Microfiche reel C8533)
38
Ibid; Scott, “transcript of testimony.”
236
Minister to identify Indians for enfranchisement without an application from the
individuals concerned,
…while the departure from the spirit of the existing Act is radical, it is in all
respects desirable that we should have legislation enabling us to enfranchise
Indians without the preliminary application from themselves and without the
consent of the band.39
It is quite possible that Scott had additional motivation in seeking provisions
providing for mandatory enfranchisement. In a case concerning the Six Nations activist
F.O. Loft, Scott attempted to enforce enfranchisement as a political weapon.40 Loft was
an Ontario civil servant who had served in the Canadian forces as a lieutenant during
World War I. Following the war he engaged in an effort to create a national political
organization for Indian peoples across Canada. In 1919, he issued an invitation to Indian
bands across Canada to join his League of Indians for a fee of $5,
We as Indians from one end of the Dominion to the other, are sadly strangers to
each other; we have not learned what it is to co-operate and work for each other as
we should; the pity of it is greater because our needs, our drawbacks, handicaps
and troubles are all similar. It is for us to do something to get out of these sad
conditions. The day is past when one band or a few bands can successfully – if at
all- free themselves from the domination of officialdom and from being ever the
prey and victims of unscrupulous means of depriving us of our lands and homes,
and even deny us our rights we are entitled to as free men under the British flag.41
In response, Scott directed his arguments for enfranchisement against Loft specifically,
I am sending herewith a copy of a circular issued by an Indian of the Six Nations,
F.O. Loft, who is earning his living outside the reserve. This may be a clever
scheme to put him in funds, but it has the effect of disquieting the Indians and
stirring up suspicion of the Department and the Government. Such a man should
be enfranchised.42
Scott, “Enfranchisement”, 2.
Peter Kulchhyski, “’A Considerable Unrest’ F.O. Loft and the League of Indians,” Native Studies Review
5 1&2, 1988, 95-117; Titley, 1986, 102-109.
41
F.O. Loft open letter of November 14, 1919, LAC-BAC RG10, Vol. 6810 File 470-2-3 Pt. 7.
42
Scott, “Enfranchisement”, LAC-BAC RG10 VOL 6810, file 470-2-3
39
40
237
Ultimately, Loft successfully resisted efforts for his compulsory enfranchisement. Loft, a
Cnadian military veteran categorized enfranchisement as tantamount to his
denationalization as a Mohawk.43
Loft was one of several Six Nations activists who would attract Scott’s ire
following World War I until his retirement in 1932. Mohawk nationalists managed to
take their claim for a “nation to nation” relationship with Canada to the League of
Nations and to members of British parliament. In 1924, Scott enlisted the services of an
Indian agent based in Brantford, Ontario to forcefully break up a traditional Iroquoian
council with Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers to impose the elected band
councillor system prescribed by the Indian Act.44 With the introduction of Bill 14 in 1920
and with World War I concluded, Scott was determined to spearhead this comprehensive
effort to ramp up provisions aimed at assimilation. People such as F.O. Loft stood in his
way. Scott attacked Loft’s service in the Canadian military,
He has some education, has a rather attractive personal appearance, but he is a
shallow, talkative individual. He is one of the few Indians who are endeavouring
to live off their brethren by organizing an Indian society, and collecting fees from
them… I have proposed to him that he should be enfranchised, which, I think,
accounts for this sudden activity on his part. What he ought to get is a good snub.
He volunteered for the war and looked very well in a uniform, but he was cunning
enough to avoid any active service, and I do not think his record in that regard is a
very good one.45
E. Brian Titley calls Scott petty in this instance. Loft was the same age as Scott. It is no
wonder he did not engage in combat – he was 55 when he volunteered to serve. Loft was
sent to France in a non-combat role.
43
Ibid, 105. LAC/BAC Rg10, vol. 3211, file 527,781, Loft to Sir James Lougheed with memo by Scott
attached, 9 February, 1921.
44
Titley, Narrow Vision, 1,125-134.
45
As cited in Titley, Narrow Vision, 105; Scott to Sir James Lougheed, 21 February, 1921 LAC-BAC
Rg10, vol. 3211, file 527,781.
238
Scott’s activities in defence of Bill 14 bear the hallmark of an effective and
determined senior civil servant, belying any notion of a detached artist simply following
orders. Scott elicited support for the Bill from likely supporters and he discouraged
appearances by Indians who would be hostile to the measures. In the spring of 1920,
there were 17 hearings in all. Despite Scott’s efforts to stack the hearings in terms
favourable to the Department, most Indians who appeared opposed the measures.46
Scott’s displeasure was evident in his own testimony,
Mr. Harold: A point has been brought up several times that the old method of
enfranchisement was too hard, and that the new one is going to another extreme,
and it has always appealed to me that if this were framed along lines so that the
Indian had not to make the application, or take the initiative, and have it arranged
so that he could automatically become a citizen, it would be better. Why do you
approach it the way that you do instead of the other method?
Mr. Scott: Because if you understood the Indian mind you would know. Surely
we have had enough illustrations of it here. These gentlemen are perfectly able to
address the Committee -- far better than I am – as far as the form goes. But those
are the people who will never move.47
Scott engaged in a lobbying and propaganda campaign to elicit support for the proposed
amendments. He asked for letters to be written and attempted to limit the negative
influence of too many Indians testifying. He sent identical telegrams to at least five heads
of residential schools seeking expressions of support for the compulsory attendance
provisions: “Would appreciate letter from you supporting our new measure now before
Parliament of compulsory attendance at Indian Residential schools.”48 In a letter to
Reverend T. Albert Moore, a Methodist Church leader, Scott argued for strengthening the
46
Titley, Narrow Vision, 48-51.
Transcript of committee proceedings, 57-58. LAC/BAC RG10, vol. 3211.
48
Scott, Night Letttergram to Rev. JT. McNally, Bishop of Calgary April 1, 1920. Night Letter to Rev. R.
Grandin, Oblate Fathers Provincial House, Edmonton, April 1, 1920. LAC-BAC RG10, Volume 6810, file
470-2-3) Pt. 7
47
239
powers of the department regarding both enfranchisement and compulsory attendance at
residential or day schools,
You will note our proposals with regard to compulsory education. These
clauses will enable us to send children to residential schools and to have control
over them while there, which we have never had in the past.
The enfranchisement clauses will enable us to give the rights of
citizenship to such Indians as are found to be competent without the consent of
their respective bands, which at present is necessary, and which has been an
obstacle to progress, and to give enfranchisement without a long and vexatious
period of probation. It may interest you to know that while under the old Act,
since Confederation up to a year ago, we had only succeeded in enfranchising one
hundred and sixty Indians, under the amendment, which I recommended and which
was passed in the session of 1918, we have already enfranchised nearly three
hundred Indians.49
Scott also sought appearances by Indians who might support the measure, offering
to pay for their travel and accommodation.50 Conversely, Scott responded negatively to
an inquiry by committee chairperson W.A. Boys who had fielded complaints from some
Indians about lack of notice prior to the hearings,
I hope that the Committee will not consider it necessary that notices should be sent,
because if we send a notice to one band or tribe, it would go to all, and the result
would be that the city would be flooded with Indians who would gladly take this
opportunity of having a free trip to the capital. Their evidence should not really be
needed because we know that those who would come would be opposed to the Bill
or any government measure, unless they see some immediate profit, financial or
otherwise, without any outlay on their part, and representations on
this side will be fully aired by the Indians now here and the Counsel they have
engaged…
In considering the Bill the Committee should, of course, give full weight
to the Indian psychology.51
The transcript of Scott’s testimony before the committee also reveals many of the
ethical traps and ideological inconsistencies of the Department’s civilizing mission. Bill
49
Scott to Rev. T. Albert Moore, general secretary Evangelism and Social Service, The Methodist Church,
March 10, 1920. LAC-BAC RG10, Volume 6810, file 470-2-3)
50
Scott, letter to Chief Dan Whetung, Curve Lake, Ontario, April 1, 1920. LAC-BAC RG10, Volume 6810,
file 470-2-3) Pt. 7
51
Scott, letter to M.P. W.A. Boys, April 3, 1920. Response to Boys’ letter of April 1, 1920. LAC-BAC
RG10, Volume 6810, file 470-2-3) Pt. 7
240
14 provided the government of Canada the right to enforce mandatory attendance at
Indian day or residential schools even without parental consent. This provision
contributed to the suffering many Indian students suffered in schools run on behalf of the
Department by religious organizations.52 Scott himself was aware of the dangers inherent
in the residential school system. In 1914, he had recognized as much in a submission he
provided for an encyclopaedia,
It cannot be gainsaid that in the early days of school administration in the
territories, while the problem was still a new one, the system was open to
criticism. Insufficient care was exercised in the admission of children to the
schools. The well-known predisposition of Indians to tuberculosis resulted in a
very large percentage of deaths among the pupils. They were housed in buildings
not carefully designed for school purposes, and these buildings became infected
and dangerous to the inmates. It is quite within the mark to say that fifty per cent
of the children who passed through these schools did not live to benefit from the
education which they had received therein.53
Six years later in his testimony to a parliamentary committee, Scott presented a staunch
defence of the very system he described in such dire terms in 1914. In a memorandum on
Indian education that Scott wrote in preparation for the hearings, he insisted on the
government’s right and Indian parents’ obligations in regards to compulsory aspects of
Indian education in Canada,
As an answer to an argument which might be raised against the invasion of the
rights of the parents over the children, it should be pointed out that all Indians are
wards of the Crown, and the western treaties all provide for education as part of
the compensation for the cession of the Indian title. As this provision was inserted
at the request of the Indians, and altogether in their interests, it follows that they
have certain responsibilities, and must produce their children to be educated.54
52
Miller, Shingwauk's Vision, 169-70; Milloy, National Crime, 70-1;Titley, Narrow Vision, 90-3.
Duncan Campbell Scott “Indian Affairs 1867-1912” from Canada and its Provinces Vol. 5, Section 3,
“Upper Canada.” Adam Shortt and Arthur G. Doughty, eds. (Toronto: Glasgow, Brook, 1914) Essay reprinted in Duncan Campbell Scott, Addresses, Essays and Reviews Edited by Leslie Ritchie, Introduction
by Stan Dragland Vol. 1 (London, Canada: Canadian Poetry Press, 2000), 204-5.
54
Duncan Campbell Scott briefing notes regarding compulsory education for appearance at Parliamentary
Committee, 1920. LAC/BAC RG10 Vol 6810, file 470-2-3 Pt.7
53
241
Indian leaders considered access to quality education in treaty negotiations. Such leaders
did not foresee the coercion and the widespread psychological, physical and sexual abuse
that was part of the residential school experience for many Indian children. Indian parents
did not intend to “produce their children” for such treatment. Further, in 1920, large parts
of the Canadian west (most significantly almost the entirety of British Columbia) were
not under treaty. Nevertheless, Scott, in enunciating Departmental policy, presumed that
its educational policies must be enforced all the way to the Pacific Ocean.
In addition to the vocal opposition of some of the Indian leaders who appeared at
the committee, Bill 14’s dual intent to accelerate enfranchisement while making
attendance mandatory at Indian day and residential schools attracted attention in the
media. In its editorial pages, The Globe of Toronto expressed the view that the
enfranchisement measures were unfair to returning Aboriginal veterans (such as F.O.
Loft) who had served Canada valiantly in the war,
Three thousand of them enlisted during the war, and the offer of the franchise
might be taken as recognition of their services, but the bill appears to force this
privilege upon them with consequences for which perhaps they are not yet
prepared.55
In its conclusion, the same editorial expressed an understanding of Bill 14’s ultimate
intent and foreshadowed a national debate over Indian status that would reverberate for
decades to come, “The present bill contemplates the extinction of the system of reserves,
and it is doubtful whether the country or the Indians themselves are prepared for this
55
“ENFRANCHISEMENT OF INDIANS” The Globe, Toronto, March 20, 1920. Editorial page. Press
reports/letters to editor re. Indian Act Amendments LAC-BAC RG10 Vol. 6810 .
242
departure from traditional policy.” The Globe foreshadowed a debate that would
reverberate for decades.56
The discourse surrounding the issue in 1920 reflected the complicated challenges
that Indian policy presented (and present still) to the overall thrust of the Canadian liberal
project. The Ottawa Journal also lauded Indian veterans, but supported the measures
because, “THE JOURNAL has long advocated the extension of the franchise to Indians
who are able to read and write. We do not think that a man’s color is ever a good reason
to think of him as an inferior being, regardless of other considerations.”57 Newspaper
readers also waded in. A letter in The Citizen of Ottawa characterized the measures
regarding enfranchisement and compulsory attendance at residential schools as an assault
of Canadian democratic values,
The educational feature of Bill 14 is as bad as the rest of it, as it provides for arrest
and imprisonment of children in sectarian boarding schools, the only schools in
existence on most of the western reserves. In a country which boasts of religious
freedom, it will be time enough to enforce compulsory education when we have
provided the reserve with non-sectarian national day schools.58
The same letter raises the matter of sexual abuse in the schools,
Some of these schools are excellent and conducted by first class people, but all
classes of girls necessarily attend them, the depraved and the good often
occupying the same dormitory for years. In his capacity of justice of the peace in
Alberta, the writer is frequently applied to by the authorities of Indian boarding
schools in their efforts to check the practice of young men gaining access in the
girls’ dormitories in the night time, and in one case of the sort, involving four
56
For a discussion of reaction to related proposals by the government of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau
and Indian and Northern Affairs Minister Jean Chrétien in its 1969 White Paper proposal on Indian policy,
see Sally M. Weaver, Making Canadian Indian Policy: The Hidden Agenda 1968-70 (Toronto: University
of Toronto Press, 1981), 3-11; see also Harold Cardinal The Unjust Society: The Tragedy of Canada’s
Indians (Edmonton: Hurtig, 1969); H.A. McCue The Only Good Indian: Essays by Canadian Indians
Toronto: New Press, 1972).
57
“THE INDIAN AND THE VOTE”, The Ottawa Journal, March 23, 1920. Editorial page. Press
reports/letters to editor re. Indian Act Amendments LAC-BAC RG10 Vol. 6810 .
58
R.N. Wilson, letter to the editor, The Citizen, Ottawa June 25, 1920. Press reports/letters to editor re.
Indian Act Amendments LAC-BAC RG10 Vol. 6810 .
243
young men, two of whom were affected with loathsome disease. Would Mr.
Meighen compel his daughter to take such risks? He certainly would not. Then
let him withdraw his infamous legislation. – R.N. WILSON, Macleod, Alberta59
Most scholars who have specialized in Native education agree that Scott’s goal both as
director of education and then as Deputy Superintendent General was to reform the system
by ridding it of risks of tuberculosis and tamping down what were then relatively
infrequent stories of predatory sexual behaviour by school personnel. Scott wanted the
system to function better while carefully managing costs. He was always concerned with
the Department’s reputation in regards to the education programme. There is no evidence
that he challenged the fundamental assumptions on which the system rested.60
Scott’s preparatory notes and his testimony in defence of Bill 14 reveal tenacity,
an occasional mean-spiritedness and a genuine conviction of the fundamental
righteousness of the Department’s cause. For example, Scott claimed he wanted more
resources for the Department’s education efforts: “The appropriations are determined by
Parliament; if I had my own way I would immediately double the appropriation for
Indian education.”61 In sum, Scott wanted additional means to educate Indian children,
even in a manner inconsistent with parental wishes if necessary, to accelerate the
‘civilization’ and eventual assimilation of an otherwise doomed race,
I want to get rid of the Indian problem. I do not think as a matter of fact, that this
country ought to have to continuously protect a class of people who are able to
stand alone. That is my whole point. I do not want to pass into the citizens’ class
people who are paupers. That is not the intention of the Bill. But after one
hundred years, after being in close contact with civilization it is enervating to the
individual or to a band to continue in that state of tutelage, when he or they are
able to take their position as British citizens, or Canadian citizens, to support
59
Ibid.
Titley, Narrow Vision, 75, 91-3; Milloy, National Crime, 70, 94-5, 181; Miller, Shingwauk’s Vision, 140,
357.
61
Transcript of proceedings of special Parliamentary Committee, April 1920, 53-54. LAC-BAC RG10
VOL 6810, file 470-2-3. (also Microfiche reel C8533.)
60
244
themselves, and stand alone. That has been the whole purpose of Indian education
and advancement from the earliest time.62
Scott and the (mis)Use of Ethnography
Scott like Soustelle, enlisted ethnography in his defence of colonial policy. Scott’s
briefing notes on Bill 14 rely on a report commissioned by his Department by Marius
Barbeau about the “proposed disestablishment” of the Lorette Wendat reserve near Quebec
City,
Last summer Mr. C.M Barbeau, of the Anthropological Division, Geological
Survey, carried out an investigation at Lorette at our request, and his report will
be in my hands in a few days. Mr. Barbeau tells me that the result of his
investigation shows that these Indians are ready for enfranchisement.63
Barbeau’s report reveals some of the achingly contradictory assumptions behind
Canadian policies of assimilation and civilization for Indian peoples.64 Barbeau describes
the community as being very similar to other Canadian villages. His report proceeds to list
a number of successful business activities in the community such as the manufacture of
moccasins, snowshoes and other items that reflect Wendat identity. These economic
pursuits tied to the twentieth-century market economy on the outskirts of Quebec City are
cited as evidence of assimilation, rather than adaptation or, to use a phrase famously
associated with Jacques Soustelle, integration.
Barbeau, in this particular ethnological assignment commissioned by the Indian
Department, performed the same trick of liberal exclusion that underpins much of Scott’s
Indian poetry in which Indians are often portrayed as doomed vestiges of disappearing
cultures. The Wendat manufactured by Barbeau for the Canadian Indian Department is
62
Ibid, 54-55.
Scott, “Enfranchisement”, 3.
64
Marius Barbeau, “Lorette Reserve: A Report Concerning Its Proposed Disestablishment” for Indian
Department – based on investigation conducted in August 1919. LAC/BAC RG10 Vol 6810, File 470
63
245
trapped, frozen, figée in the seventeenth century. Barbeau seems incapable of imagining a
twentieth-century, French-speaking, self-described Wendat participating as such in the
Canadian economy and polity. As with Scott in his fixations in regards to Bill 14, Barbeau,
in this instance at least, argues that the loss of a person’s identity as an Indian is the
requisite price of joining Canada. Barbeau’s ethnological efforts in Lorette suited Scott’s
purpose at the hearings to examine the proposed amendments to the Indian Act.
Scott and the Department had a complex relationship with the nascent disciplines
of ethnography and anthropology in Canada. In his 1922 address to the Royal Society of
Canada, Scott lauded the creation of the National Museum of Ethnology, Archaeology
and Natural History.65 As in the case concerning Lorette, Scott sometimes marshalled
ethnological evidence to substantiate his convictions about doomed races. In other
instances, social scientists opposed Departmental policy and Scott ran afoul of Canada’s
emerging social scientists.
Following a hardening of policy championed by Scott in 1918, Indian agents and
prosecutors in British Columbia in 1920 achieved the first convictions for potlatching
since 1897. Scott maintained that the persistence of the potlatch in British Columbia, as
well as the sun dance on the prairies, vitiated the Department’s civilizing efforts.
However, the collective wisdom of Canadian social science did not follow the
Departmental line on the potlatch. Edward Sapir, Franz Boas and others had contributed
to a report from the anthropological division of the Department of Mines which
contended that the potlatch was a positive manifestation of Native culture and that its
65
Re-printed in Scott, Scott Addresses, 302. Speech delivered on May 17, 1922 to the Royal Society of
Canada. Originally published Royal Society of Canada Proceedings and Transactions. 3rd Series, 16
(1922), xlvii-lxvii Also re-printed in S.L. Dragland, ed., Duncan Campbell Scott: A Book of Criticism
(Ottawa: Tecumseh, 1974), 7-30.
246
maintenance would facilitate a positive transition for Aboriginals in British Columbia to
modern Canada. Scott had this report suppressed.66
Le Plan Soustelle
Many scholars have debated French liberalism, decolonization and the political
application of the social sciences. Questions about Jacques Soustelle’s role in the
Algerian conflict have been part of that wider argument.67 Soustelle’s mission as
Governor General and its aftermath contributed to the demise of the fourth republic and
the return of Charles de Gaulle as president. Between 1955 and 1968, Soustelle would
engage many of France’s leading political and intellectual figures in a tempestuous
debate over the future of French Algeria. Raymond Aron, Albert Camus, Franz Fanon
and Jean Paul Sartre were among the luminaries of French intellectual life who took sides
in a debate in which Soustelle was never far from centre stage.68 From his installation as
Governor General in early 1955 through the final demise of French rule in 1962 and in
the bitter years of his self exile following the Evian Accords, Soustelle was a marker of
French stubbornness in his singular defense of l’Algérie Française.
In her work on the colonial archive of Indonesia and the forms of knowledge that
it stores in terms of both revelation and obfuscation, Ann Laura Stoler discusses the role
66
Bracken, Potlatch Papers, 218-224; Douglas Cole and Ira Chaikin, An Iron Hand upon the People: The
Law Against the Potlatch on the Northwest Coast (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 1990), 101.
67
See Bernard Droz and Evelyne Lever, Histoire de la guerre d’Algérie 1954-1962 (Paris: Seuil, 1982),
67-8; Stephen Tyre, "From Algérie Française to France Musulmane: Jacques Soustelle and the Myths and
Realities of ‘Integration’, 1955–1962," French History 20, no. 3 (09, 2006): 276-296; Todd Shepherd,
"How Ethnographic Research in 1930s Mexico Shaped French Efforts to Fight Algerian Nationalism in
1955." UNESCO lecture, Cambridge, April 6-7, 2009.
68
See James D. Le Sueur, ‘De-Colonizing French Universalism' Reconsidering the Impact of the Algerian
War on French Intellectuals," in The Decolonization Reader, Le Sueur ed. (New York ; London:
Routledge, 2003), 103-117; Le Sueur, Uncivil War: Intellectuals and Identity Politics during the
Decolonization of Algeria (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001); Raoul Girardet, L'Idée
Coloniale En France De 1871 a 1962 (Paris: La table ronde, 1972), 193-235.
247
of willful or culturally blind ignorance as part of the colonial experience. In simple terms,
the colonizer who maintained loyalty to imperial power had to adopt a sort of ignorance
about the world within the colony.69 Some who refused to play ignorant simply left
because of their incapacity to abide by the colonial conditions. Jacques Soustelle in his
zeal to reform l’Algérie française in the name of integration seemed blind to the harsh
legacy of 125 years of French rule. Soustelle also failed to identify the contradiction
between his ramping up the corrosive power of French militarism while simultaneously
seeking a rapid transition which would find French ruler and Algerian Muslim subaltern
co-existing in harmony.
Soustelle arrived in Algeria as Governor General in 1955 intent on putting his
knowledge of Indigenousness from Mexico to practical application, presenting a peculiar,
perhaps unprecedented, instance in which a colonial regime turned to an intellectual bent
on overcoming ignorance and on the production of new forms of knowledge to salvage
and ultimately redeem colonial authority.70 Stoler’s admonition regarding the complexity
of ‘colonial lives’ serves as a useful frame in considering Soustelle’s simultaneously
enlightened, contradictory, vicious and doomed vision of l’Algerie francaise.
Jacques Soustelle’s obdurate refusal to accept France’s abandonment of Algeria
and his illicit efforts to bring down Charles de Gaulle following 1962 can obscure the
nature of his efforts in Algeria as Governor General when the French government and the
majority of its citizens could not have imagined an outcome of Algerian independence.
69
Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), 140, 247-8, 256, 278.
70
Jacques Soustelle, Aimée et souffrante Algérie, (Paris: Plon, 1956), 2-7; Jacques Soustelle, Television
interview “Lectures pour tous”, French TV June 6, 1956. Soustelle described how his knowledge of
Mexico informed his policies as Governor General of Algeria. INA
248
Reaction among French political elites and the military to the unexpected ‘Tout
Saint’ (All Saints’ Day) FLN assault was all the more acute because this Algerian revolt
took place during the same year that France had suffered a calamitous defeat at the hands
of Vietnamese nationalists at Dien Bien Phu.71 The government of Pierre-Mendes France
envisaged a two-pronged response: the crisis would be met by a powerful (in fact,
disproportionate) military response and an overdue, comprehensive effort to reform
French rule in Algeria.72
Soustelle had gained some familiarity with Algeria during World War II.
Soustelle was named intelligence chief for de Gaulle’s administration in Alger prior to
liberation.73 After quitting London, the Free French forces of de Gaulle had set up a
provisional government in Alger awaiting the liberation of mainland France in 1944. As
the date of the liberation of mainland France neared, Soustelle travelled extensively in
Algeria enhancing his understanding of the country and whetting a curiosity which would
be given full vent in 1955.74
In the chaotic politics of the Fourth Republic, Mendes-France’s government was
defeated in part because of opposition to the proposed installation of Soustelle whom the
hard right, both in Paris and Alger, considered too left-wing.75 Ultimately, in the
aftermath of the debacle of ‘le Tout Saint’, France still turned to the social scientist with
the background in Indigenous studies to help save Algeria. The subsequent government,
71
Horne, Savage War, 83-4.
Ibid, 98-9.
73
Denis Rolland, “Jacques Soustelle, De l'Ethnologie à La Politique,” Revue d'Histoire Moderne Et
Contemporaine (1954-) 43, no. 1, La vie politique en France, hommes et débats, 1930-1960 (Jan. - Mar.,
1996), 137-150.
74
Jacques Soustelle, « Souvenirs, apocryphes sous la Forme d'une dialogue avec Georges Suffert ,»122-6;
Ullmann, mal aimé, 88-93.
75
Horne, Savage War, 105-8 ; Ullmann, mal aimé, 184-90.
72
249
of a centre-right tinge, stuck by Mitterand’s nomination of Soustelle.76 The stakes would
be extremely high for Soustelle. France’s unequivocal insistence on crushing a revolt
while at the same time advancing reforms would test the mettle of the full-time
ethnologist and part-time, until then, politician. In the February 1955 debate over his
installation, Adelmadjid Ourabah, a leftist member of the national assembly from
Constantine, Algeria reminded Soustelle of his academic roots when he demanded that
Soustelle offer Moslem Algerians the same rights that Soustelle had championed for
impoverished Mexicans in the 1930s.77
Soustelle was eager to respond to Mitterand’s challenge of delivering rapidly on a
policy of integration. The Algeria that he had briefly seen during the war had deteriorated
in the decade following the defeat of Nazi Germany. Leading French and Algerian
advocates for a more humane governance of French Algeria made the scope of the
challenge confronting Soustelle abundantly clear. Soustelle’s association with two such
intellectuals reveals the complexities of Soustelle’s fractious passage through the politics
of l’Algérie française: Germaine Tillion and Albert Camus. His relationships with Tillion
and Camus complicate any attempt to place Soustelle as an isolated, contrarian advocate
for French Algeria and opponent of Algerian independence in the late 1950s and early
1960s.
Just prior to World War II, Albert Camus had returned to his native land and
delivered a devastating portrait of French colonialism in a series of articles originally
published by the centre-left newspaper Alger républicain.78 Camus was appalled to
76
Horne, Savage War, 107; Ullmann, mal aimé ,190.
As cited in Jacques Soustelle, Aimée et souffrante Algérie (Paris: Plon, 1956), 7.
78
Albert Camus, Actuelles, III Chroniques Algériennes 1939-1958 (Paris: Gallimard, 1958), 32-41. Camus’
writings about Algeria were re-published in English in 2013. Camus, Algerian Chronicles, translated by
77
250
discover that rural peoples in the land of his birth had been driven further into poverty by
the continued expansion of settler colonialism. Training his novelist’s power of
description on rural conditions in particular, Camus described the impact of deforestation
caused by the French administration’s depredation of oak forests to supply the wine
industry with corks. Camus also described the desperate, environmentally disastrous
attempts by hills people to keep winter cooking and heating fires burning by denuding
their lands of trees required to prevent soil erosion. Camus reported that conditions were
desperate, poverty was rampant and that it was only a matter of time before grievous
social and political unrest would erupt. His reportage also pointed to the special
challenge that faced would be reformers: the land could no longer support Algeria’s
indigenous population.79
Just prior to Soustelle’s nomination as Governor General, another leading French
humanist returned to Algeria to survey conditions. Germaine Tillion, Soustelle’s former
colleague at le Musée de l’Homme and fellow résistante to the Nazi occupation of France,
was engaged by Mitterand to report on conditions of the people who she had
studied as another of Paul Rivet’s doctoral students in the 1930s. Tillion had lived among
Berber peoples in the Aurès mountains of Algeria. Immediately following the outbreak of
war, she returned to France and joined the resistance. Denounced by a collaborating
priest, she and other members of the resistance cell organized at le Musée de l’Homme
were captured by the Nazi occupiers of Paris. Two of her male colleagues were
Arthur Goldhammer. Edited by Alice Kaplan (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2013). Review
essays appeared in major English language publications. James Campbell “Betwixt and Between Camus was
a son of Algeria – the ‘kingdom of poverty’ that nourished all he wrote,” The Wall Street Journal, May
4, 2013, page C5; Susan Rubin Suleiman, “The Postcolonial – Albert Camus’ writings on Algeria reveal
both hope and dread,” The New York Times, Sunday May 12, 2013, Book Review section, page 32).
79
Camus, Chroniques Algériennes, 32-41.
251
summarily executed by the Germans. Tillion and her mother were sent to the
concentration camp at Ravensbruck where her mother died. Tillion’s almost complete
doctoral thesis on Algeria was seized by the Gestapo, perhaps destroyed, and has never
re-surfaced.80
Following the war, Tillion resumed her activities as an ethnologist, educator and social
reformer. For the rest of her active working life, Tillion championed the poor of Algeria
and, based on her personal experience as a concentration camp survivor, became a highly
esteemed advocate for political prisoners in many parts of the world, beginning with
prisoners of the French military during the last phases of the Algerian conflict. Tillion was
never an ‘ivory tower’ academic. In the late 1940s, she looked back on her career with an
activist bent,
De mon cote je considérais les obligations de ma profession d’ethnologue comme
comparable a celles des avocats, avec la différence qu’elle me contraignait a défendre
une population au lieu d’une personne.81
During her mission to Algeria at the behest of François Mitterand in the autumn of
1954 and early 1955, Tillion, like Camus before her, was shocked by the further
degradation that had occurred since her doctoral research in the mid-1930s, “Quand je les
ai retrouves, entre novembre 1954 et février 1955, j’ai été atterrée par le changement
survenu chez eux en moins de quinze ans et que je ne puis exprimer que par ce mot :
“clochardisation.”82
Nelly Forget and Nancy Wood, “Notice biographique,” in Le Siècle de Germaine Tillion, sous la
direction de Tzevtan Todorov, (Paris: Éditions de Seuil, 2007), 16-7.
81
Germaine Tillion, L’Afrique bascule vers l’avenir (Paris: Editions Tirésias – Michel Reynaud, 1999),18.
82
Germaine Tillion, L’Afrique bascule vers l’avenir (Paris : Éditions Tirésias : 1999),76. This is a republication of some of Tillion’s most important writings about Algeria. This citation and those that
immediately follow were originally published in the form of the pamphlet entitled L’Algérie en 1957
(Paris: Association Nationale Des Anciennes Déportés Et Internées De La Resistance, 1957).
80
252
Tillion famously coined the phrase clochardisation to describe the social and economic
collapse she reported to Mitterand. Clochard means an extremely poor person, even a
‘bum’, or someone living on the streets. Travelling remote mountainous areas as Camus
had done almost twenty years earlier, Tillion discovered that the Chaouii Berber tribes
people already impoverished when she first lived among them in the 1930s had suffered a
precipitous decline in living standards. Like Camus, Tillion reported that urbanization
and the expansion of agricultural businesses had gone far beyond the limit of the land’s
capacity to support family-based sustainable forms of agriculture that had been in
operation for centuries. The degradation of the small land holdings was compounded by a
population explosion due to the success of French-introduced vaccination campaigns.83
On the one hand, people were living longer and families were increasing in size; on the
other, local resources necessary for rural survival were diminishing while there was no
accompanying expansion of opportunity for the young in major cities such as Algiers,
Oran and Constantine.
Tillion would eventually publish her findings in a dire report entitled L’Algérie en
1957.84 The work was published under the auspices of an organisation of resistance
veterans. Tillion appealed to her colleagues, shocked as they were, like many in France,
by the unexpected virulence of the Algerian revolt, to remember the sacrifice that
thousands of soldiers from the Maghreb had made for France in the World Wars. She
pleaded for reconciliation and argued for maintaining the ties between la métropole and
l’Algérie française that would become an obsession for Jacques Soustelle. As a trained
ethnologist, Tillion was sufficiently horrified by what she saw happening in Algeria in
83
84
Tillion, L’Afrique bascule, 78.
Ibid, 79.
253
1954-5 that she described the overall effect as a process of inexorably driving untold
thousands of Algerians into poverty with no viable economic means of rescue,
L’accroissement numérique brutal de la population, contraire a son expérience
millénaire, la diminution parallèle de ses ressources, l’effondrement de l’économie, le
contact avec la supériorité décourageante des mécaniques étrangères, ont pour résultat
de faire chavirer les civilisations archaïques qui subissent ces assauts. Tout,
maintenant, s’effondre ou va s’effondrer : les arts, les techniques et toutes les
ingénieuses coutumes qui permettaient a un groupe de vivre à peu près en paix.85
The economic and social situation outlined so vividly and persuasively by Albert
Camus and Germaine Tillion set the context for the reforms Soustelle promulgated when
he began his tenure as Governor General. Further, Soustelle was charged with acting on a
series of measures aimed at enhancing the democratic participation of Muslim Algerians
in a political process that was dominated by colons, the Algerians of European origin often
referred to as pied noirs.86 Such reforms had their origins in the Popular Front socialist
government in 1936. In the intervening 20 years nothing of substance had been
achieved.87
85
Ibid,79-80.
Horne, Savage War 30, 51-4.
87
Ibid, 36-7; Ageron, l'Algérie Contemporaine, 90-1;Ian Lustick, State-Building Failure in British Ireland
& French Algeria (Berkeley: iiS Institute of International Studies, University of California, Berkeley,
1985), 71.
86
254
Figure 20 Boubsila (Bérardi ), bidonville Algérois c. 1955 - Archives Assoc. G. Tillion
(AGT)
The French yet again failed to move forward on significant reforms in 1947, when
another reform policy was undermined by electoral fraud perpetrated by pied noir
extremists. In his own preliminary notes upon his arrival as Governor General, Soustelle
acknowledged that next to no progress had been made by 1955.88 In February 1955,
Soustelle immediately enlisted the active participation of his ethnologist colleague.
Rather than returning to France following her fact-finding mission, Tillion stayed in
Algeria where she was invited by Soustelle to serve in his cabinet. Thus, the two
ethnologists who had first met as students in inter-war Paris collaborated in the drama
unfolding in Algeria in the 1950s. In Tillion’s perception, the salvation of ordinary
Algerians would demand a massive campaign of social engineering on the part of the
French authorities,
88
CAOM 11CAB/77 Soustelle March 21, 1955.
255
Une élévation rapide, générale et massive, a la fois du niveau de vie et de l’instruction,
est une condition indispensable pour atteindre la mutation sociale qui peut seule sauver
n’importe quelle population en cours de paupérisation.89
In the early months of his administration with Tillion and other reform-minded
ministers in his cabinet, Soustelle sought a major injection of French financing for
education, health services and industrial training aimed at Algeria’s Muslim majority.
Soustelle’s reform package also called for affirmative action in hiring Algerian Muslims
in the civil service. Soustelle’s plan called for universal public education in Arabic at all
levels.90
Soustelle also immediately undertook a series of unprecedented fact-finding missions
in remote parts of Algeria. As Bernard Droz and Evelyn Lever have noted, Soustelle’s
first actions showed the traces of his ethnological training and experience in the field.91
Soustelle displayed extraordinary ambition in those early months. Soustelle’s largesse as
Governor General included regular audiences with Muslim religious leaders and his
attendance at events where foodstuffs were distributed to the needy.92
In a memoir of his experience as Governor General, produced within months of
his return to France, Soustelle emphasized that his Mexican experience was at the
forefront of his attempted understanding of the Algerian situation,
Tillion, L’Afrique bascule, 94.
CAOM 11CAB/78 « Réformes » Annotated list of reforms with hand-written marginalia by Soustelle.
June 6, 1955. List includes training of Moslem civil servants; land reform; creation of rural social centres;
plans for improved irrigation of Arab lands. On August 8, 1955 Soustelle received a MISE AU POINT, or
update, on the state of his hurried reforms. The central points touch upon recruitment of Moslems for the
civil service; school instruction in Arabic; and ensuring that Moslem faith would be separate from the state.
91
Droz and Lever, la guerre d’Algérie, 67.
92
CAOM 11CAB/29 August 1, 1955 Office memo regarding “remise de denrées alimentaires” planned for
an appearance by Soustelle in Tablat.
89
90
256
J’ai retrouvé en fait, en Algérie, les mêmes problèmes qu’au Mexique; bien
souvent, en voyant les gourbis de terre sèche et de chaume, entourés de haies de
nopals, je me serais cru chez les Otomis du haut-plateau de l’Anahuac. On s’est
aperçu là-bas, après avoir morcelé les latifundia par la réforme agraire, qu’il
restait encore tout à faire, car la terre à elle seule ne nourrit personne.93
In a television appearance that coincided with that publication, Soustelle further argued
the Mexican connection,
J’ai vu les choses un peu en ethnologue. C’est certain quand j’ai crée les SAS
(sections administratives spéciales) je m’inspiré d’une chose très précise qui
étaient les missions culturelles mexicaines qui étaient planté dans les villages
mexicaines…94
The possibility of using Mexico as some sort of model for reform in North Africa had
surfaced even prior to Soustelle’s arrival. His mentor Paul Rivet, whose knowledge of
indigenismo in post-revolutionary Mexico must have been influenced considerably by the
observations of his then graduate student Jacques Soustelle, drew the link as early as
1936 in a Parisian leftist publication,
Au cours d’un récent voyage en Afrique du Nord, j’ai été frappé par
l’étrange parallélisme qui existe au point de vue social et économique entre ce
pays et un certain nombre de républiques du centre et du sud de l’Amérique.
La révolution mexicaine qui a été si calomnié, n’a été en réalité qu’un immense
effort pour concilier les intérêts des descendants des « conquistadores » et des
Indiens asservis. Ce fut essentiellement une révolution agraire comme celle que
nous avons réalisée au moment de la révolution, comme celle que tant de pays
d’Europe centrale ont amorcée depuis la guerre.
Écoles rurales : Bref, l’enseignement s’adapte étroitement au milieu et il est avant
tout d’ordre technique et hygiénique ; l’enseignement de la lecture, de l’écriture
ne sont pas le but unique, ni même l’essentiel. Ce qui importe, c’est de créer dans
les milieux indigènes des possibilités de développement matériel, d’améliorer leur
niveau de vie et de faire ainsi apprécier les bienfaits de la civilisation.95
93
Soustelle, Aimée et souffrante, 59.
Jacques Soustelle interviewed on “Lectures pour tous” by Pierre Desgroupes about Soustelle’s book
Aimée et souffrante Algérie, December 19, 1956, Inathèque, BNF – Mitterand, Paris.
95
Paul Rivet. “Nous ne pourrons conserver l’Afrique du Nord que si nous y faisons une grande réforme
agraire; ce que l’exemple du Mexique nous enseigne,” Paris: L’oeuvre, 8 Mai, 1937,1-2. Thanks to Rivet
biographer Christine Laurière for directing me to this article.
94
257
Recent scholarship has explored the connection between the Mexican example and
Soustelle’s efforts in Algeria.96 Central to such research is a consideration of Soustelle’s
(and Mitterand’s) vaunted ‘integration’. In the minds of its champions, ‘integration’
represented a switch from assimilation, or an association based on a hierarchy of
colonizer on top and a local, largely Muslim, majority below. What was clearly borrowed
from the Mexican example in Soustelle’s understanding was an ambitious attempt at social
engineering to rapidly elevate a local, Indigenous population which could then, as the
theory had it, participate as equals, with some cultural and linguistic traits intact, but with
identities transformed, in a modern nation-state. Soustelle’s perception of the Mexican
experience was idealized. Perhaps the passage of twenty years since his preliminary field
research in Mexico had dulled his memory and encouraged a somewhat naïve, selective
view. Historians of the Mexican Revolution largely concur that the
cluster of policies surrounding indigenismo were contested, inconsitent and imperfect.97
In his preliminary work on Mexio published in 1936, Soustelle identified both the goal
and the means by which such a transition might be effected through indigenismo,
Enfin ceux des Indiens qui sont déjà en marche, par l’agrarisme et par la diffusion
de l’éducation, vers une autre destine que celles de leurs pères, de leurs aïeux et
de cent générations dont l’incessant labeur est resté cache derrière le brillant décor
du Mexique colonial, républicain et porfiriste. J’ai déjà rendu homage plusieurs
fois, dans ces souvenirs, aux maîtres ruraux. Je les tiens pour le vrai ferment du
Mexique d’aujourd’hui eux dont la peine et quelquefois le sang fondent peu à peu
un people nouveau avec sept millions de paysans à peau brune opprimés et
méprisés. Qu’on feuillette les rapports des missions culturelles et des écoles
Todd Shepard, “How Ethnographic Research in 1930s Mexico shaped French efforts to fight Algerian
nationalism in 1955” (paper delivered at UNESCO History Conference, Cambridge, UK, April 6-7, 2009);
Stephen Tyre, “From Algérie française to France Musulmane: Jacques Soustelle and the Myths and
Realities of ‘Integration’, 1955-1962,” French History(2006) 20(3): 276-296.
97
Mary Kay Vaughan and Stephen E. Lewis, “Introduction – Utopia and Cultural Revolution,” in The
Eagle and the Virgin: Nation and Cultural Revolution in Mexico, 1920-1940 (Durham: Duke University
Press, 2006), 9-12.
96
258
rurales publiées par le Sécretariat de l’Éducation; on y verra les marches
épuisantes à travers les montagnes, l’hostilité des caciques et des prêtres, les
rebuffades et les mauvais traitements.98
With fellow ethnologist Tillion serving in his cabinet, Soustelle’s journeys in the first
months of his mandate reinforced his view that cultural missions, similar to what he had
witneseed in Mexico in the 1930s, would be the catalyst of a massive educational and
industrial training campaign. Members of the civil service remarked that wherever he
travelled across the country, Soustelle would insist on examining local schools. He also
reflected on the potential of marrying primary education with vocational training centres
and workshops.99 Le plan Soustelle called for the creation of centres sociaux, modeled on
the cultural missions of Mexico, that would offer a cluster of educational, cultural and
health services to assist both urban and rural populations to transition to an industrial
economy. Cultural missions would also serve in a campaign against illiteracy and serve
as adult education centres.100 In their idealized form the centres were to be focal points of
education, social work, health care and industrial training. It seems that Soustelle, Tillion
and their eager reformist technicians felt their efforts could efface the bitter legacy of 125
years of French depredation of local populations in a matter of a few years.
Tillion was convinced that Soustelle’s goals were correct, but she disagreed with
Soustelle that social conditions in Algeria were necessarily similar to those of Mexico.101
Tillion did not believe that rural Algeria could possibly support the country’s burgeoning
population. She felt, therefore, that while Mexican indigenismo might well have a focus
on rural peoples, the Soustelle administration should concentrate its efforts on training
98
Jacques Soustelle, Mexique terre indienne (Paris: Plon, 1936), 150.
CAOM 11CAB/77 « Education nationale » memo between members of Soustelle’s office Eydoux to
Juillet March 15, 1955.
100
CAOM 11CAB/77 minutes of meeting March 7, 1955.
101
Germaine Tillion, À la recherche du vrai et du juste, (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2011), 249.
99
259
the surging youthful population with practical skills to work in French dominated
industries.102 While Soustelle derived his inspiration from rural outposts which reminded
him of Mexico, Tillion did not rely only on her first-hand knowledge of rural Algeria
garnered in the 1930s. Her growing awareness of the urban slums around Alger,
Constantine and Oran led her to believe that the emphasis of social reform should be
urban, aimed at developing literacy, hygiene and technical skills so that young Algerians
could make a transition to an industrialized economy.103 Tillion was aware of campaigns
already underway in other parts of French Africa in which rural peoples were being
integrated to larger industrial centres of the French colonial world.104
A government report on the establishment of “le Service des centres
sociaux” described the program through the lens of social reform, literacy and various
education initiatives at the local level without reference to the gathering storm of war in
which the initiatives were launched,
Dans le principe, de qui s’agit-il? Tout d’abord, de créer une institution assez
humble pour qu’elle soit de niveau avec la collectivité la moins évoluée et
d’insérer cette institution dans la collectivité au point qu’elle en fasse partie
intégrante.105
While in Soustelle’s cabinet, Tillion engaged in an analysis of the education of young
Algerians. She established that just 230,000 out of 1.1 million Muslim boys were
receiving proper primary education; and that only 85,000 of 1 million school-age Muslim
girls were receiving anything approaching adequate elementary education. Conversely,
102
Ibid.
Tillion, La traversée du mal, 99-102; Tillion, L’Afrique bascule, 72-4.
104
UNESCO Etudes et documents d’éducation Sept 1954 No IX « Expérience françaises d’éducation de
base en Afrique Noire »1955 No XV « Etudes et documents d’éducation de base » par H.W. Howes. From
Nelly Forget’s Centre Germaine Tillion archive.
105
AFGT « le service des centres sociaux » Direction Générale de l’Education Nationale en Algérie
(Algiers: Baconnier Frères, 1957)
103
260
according to Tillion’s analysis, 14 of 15 children of European origin, regardless of gender,
had the benefit of a good education.106 Tillion’s briefing notes for her colleagues painted
a grim picture of the challenge that the zealous reformers faced,
Mesure provisoires d’urgence Il n’est pas question de renoncer a faire l’effort
nécessaire de pour donner a l’Algérie une scolarisation primaire normale, mais, en
attendant d’y être parvenu, nous nous trouvons actuellement devant un état de
fait : quatre garçons musulmans sur cinq qui ne pourront pas gagner leur vie;
quinze garçons musulmans sur seize dont l’équilibre familial est compris
d’avance. Ce sont les responsabilités que nous avons vis-à-vis de ces enfants qui
doivent actuellement primer toutes les autres considérations.
En un mot nous devons viser d’abord à une scolarisation totale et ensuite a une
scolarisation totalement alignée sur celle de la métropole. C’est seulement par une
politiques de masses (et non plu de prototypes) que nous pouvons sauver
l’Algérie.107
One effect of the reform proposals to “save Algeria” was the arrival of idealistic teachers,
public health personnel, social workers and industrial trainers to staff the education system
and the vaunted centres sociaux. As the conflict between France and Algerian rebels
intensified in the late 1950s, these people became targets for le Front de Libération
National.108
The escalating military conflict led to a political rupture between Soustelle and
Tillion. Soustelle’s instructions from Paris were clear: defeat the rebellion through an
intensification of the military effort and win ‘hearts and minds’ by finally acting on a
series of long-promised reforms to better integrate Algeria with mainland France. For
example, on the same day a state of urgency was declared by the government which
106
CAOM 11CAB/77 Germaine Tillion note « la Scolarisation des enfants de 6 a 14 ans » March 1955
ibid
108
CAOM 11CAB/29 November 22, 1955 notes from education department to provide background for a
Soustelle speech about the Centres Sociaux. These notes make reference to both the problem of recruiting
qualified teachers from France and in providing adequate security for teachers in the countryside.
107
261
directly undercut ‘universal’ principals of French liberty, the government re-affirmed the
broad outlines of its reform package, le plan Soustelle,
Dans cette œuvre de reprise en mains des populations qui nécessité une atmosphère
de confiance, une attention particulière sera apportée au développement de l’action
scolaire et sociale, des services médicaux et a l’ouverture de chantiers de travaux
d’utilité publique permettant de lutter contre le chômage, la misère et le sous
emploi.109
The pervasive double-think of the French elite in its response to the developing crisis
seeps through Soustelle’s writings even in the early reformist stage of his governorship.
In notes he prepared for a speech, Soustelle revealed fervently held convictions that
appear to be at cross purposes – social reform and military force could somehow,
together, quell the rebellion,
Pour le combattre il faut – et je m’y suis énergiquement employé – une action
répressive qui prenne parfois la forme opérationnelle de caractère militaire ; mais
il faut aussi penser les plaies si douloureuses, les cicatriser et recréer les
conditions d’une vigueur morale et matérielle nécessaires a la renaissance de la
vie la ou elle est si cruellement meurtrie.110
Tillion saw the contradiction in these policies. While she respected Soustelle’s sincerity
in his struggle with the entrenched anti-Muslim attitudes of his European subjects, she
was convinced that the enhanced militarization in the early months of Soustelle’s
administration would only drive more and more Indigenous Algerians into the arms of
the FLN. In May 1955, she quit Soustelle’s cabinet.111 She did, however, continue her
civil service responsibilities for development of les centres sociaux.
CAOM 11CAB/38 “Instructions” April 30, 1955 regarding application of the state of urgency.
CAOM 11CAB/29 preparatory notes for Soustelle speech, delivered in August 1955 just prior to the
FLN attacks on civilians around Philippeville of August 20, 1955.
111
Horne, Savage War, 114-117.
109
110
262
Half a century following these events, it is clear that Jacques Soustelle’s
ambitious reform plans were undermined and contradicted by the expanded military
effort. At the time, few French leaders understood the appeal of the FLN to rank and file
Algerians. In 1955 only a small number of intellectuals in metropolitan France were
rallying to the cause of Algerian independence. Soustelle was nominated by the centre
left and served centrist French governments which embraced both the mooted reforms
and a tougher military response. France’s embrace of a military assault and extraordinary
civil powers for the military in Algeria came under leftist rule following Soustelle’s
departure.112
In the spring of 1955, on Soustelle’s watch, France declared a ‘state of urgency’
in Algeria. The designation was carefully chosen to grant the government extraordinary
powers of detention without explicitly declaring martial law. With the state of urgency
and creation of centres d’hébergement (detention centres), Soustelle determinedly
adopted policies which vitiated the ‘universal’ rights of freedom which he claimed were
France’s legacy to Algerians and the world. With the invocation of a state of urgency, the
Governor General authorized the detention without trial for those community activists,
intellectuals and nationalists deemed capable of rallying ordinary Algerians to the cause of
independence.113
Soustelle was directly responsible for the creation of centres d’hébergement,
detention camps which were established to remove anti-French subversive elements from
the general population. Soustelle’s distinctive handwritten notes on draft documents
relating to the centres sometimes demanded a tightening of the regulatory system. For
112
Ibid, 147-64
CAOM 11CAB/38 July 7, 1955 draft of “Instructions” with marginalia and approval signature of
Soustelle.
113
263
example, in a draft version of general instructions on the functioning of the centres, an
article which would have permitted an administrative review by lawyers of detainees on
individual cases was crossed out by Soustelle with instructions to omit the provision from
the final version.114
The administrative conception and shadowy legal standing were part of a preapproved plan devised by Soustelle and vetted by the Minister of the Interior in Paris the
month prior to the implementation of the state of urgency.115 Muslim opponents protested
the camps legality as soon as they were established. Some civil servant expressed similar
legal concerns. The Soustelle administration’s legal department responded with a brief that
justified the creation of the camps.116 The centres were set up through a deliberate legal
manoeuvre. A combination of euphemistic language and a skilful deployment of
existing law provided a front of respectability for the creation of ‘centres d’hébergement’
that were, in fact, concentration camps. In the battle for hearts and minds among French
Algerians, in France and in the court of world opinion, the government of France
carefully crafted a narrative about the ‘centres’ that sought to obviate any association
with Nazi prisoner of war or death camps. In his official announcement about the state of
urgency, Soustelle reminded prefects that the law would prohibit creation of internment
camps while telegraphing just how the extraordinary powers of the state of urgency would
allow for the same thing, but described differently,
L’Etat d’urgence est un instrument temporaire pour faire cesser toute forme de
trouble et apaiser l’inquiétude des esprits. Il doit contribuer à la mission de
pacification, entendu au sens large du mot, et préparer des lendemains sans
amertume.
114
Ibid.
CAOM 11CAB/41 telegram marked SECRET VERY URGENT from Minister of Interior BourgesMaunory to Soustelle March16, 1955.
116
CAOM 11CAB/41 legal note from M. Passeron, directeur de législation May 21, 1955
115
264
J’entend que les restrictions de liberté, autorisées par la loi, soient limitées
aux justes nécessités et qu’elles ne revêtent jamais un caractère de sanction
collective.
En aucun cas, comme souligne la texte de la loi, ne devront être créés des
camps d’internement. Les individus assignes a résidence pourront logé par tous
moyens (habitations en dur disponible, baraquements, tentes, etc…) a proximité
de chantiers de travail…117
In the final paragraph above, Soustelle engaged in double speak. In one phrase, detention
centres are proscribed, in the next Soustelle envisages assigning individuals under house
arrest to various types of structures in the proximity of work camps. This legalese
allowed for the creation of centres d’ hébergement under a law established to requisition
labour dating from 1938. It gave Soustelle’s administration power to place suspects under
house arrest or to remove them to a centre d’hébergement to prevent their contact with the
general population. At this juncture, with departure of Tillion and other champions of the
reformist approach over a hardening military stance, it would appear that Soustelle was
persuaded by the hardliners who believed that the suspects rounded up in violation of
‘universal’ Republican legal norms deserved a stern hand. One of the advocates for the
camps, Henri-Paul Eydoux, proposed dispensing with any presumption of innocence, “Il
faut être extrêmement sévère avec les suspects qui sont pour la plupart
des combattants camouflé.”118
The centres required continual monitoring by Soustelle’s administration. An
inspector general by the name of Monsieur Ciosi assessed conditions in the camps and
alerted the government as to their dubious legality. Ciosi did not advocate closing the
centres; he viewed them as a useful tool in preventing “contamination” of the general
population by renegade thinkers. He argued that given their dubious legal standing it was
117
118
CAOM 11CAB/41 letter from Soustelle to prefects explaining state of urgency April 8, 1955.
CAOM 11CAB/38 memo from Eydoux to Soustelle December 2, 1955
265
all the more necessary to see that they were well run. He often reported abuse, as in the
following warning regarding the behaviour of French camp guards,
…il signale des brutalités excessives, des vols, des viols. Leur attitude,
délibérément hostile, sans ménagement et sans nuance, sans souci de respecter les
moeurs des autochtones, se traduit chez ceux-ci par une animosité qui, a travers
eux, atteint la cause française.119
Ciosi drew his colleagues’ attention to the delicacy and potential political embarrassment
surrounding the loop hole the government had utilized to allow for internment without
resorting to martial law and an outright suspension of French republican legal norms,
La loi nous interdi (sic) de donner aux « localités » ou sont assignes a résidence
les individus que nous considérons comme dangereux ou suspects, l’allure de
camp d’internement.
L’absence de barbelés ne peut faire illusion et il serait assez puéril de
vouloir jouer sur les mots. Nous sommes donc en infraction avec la loi.120
Ciosi’s reports from June 1955 bespeak the moral decay of the French administration as
the conflict intensified and the fundamental republican virtues espoused by the reformist
Governor General were abandoned. Ciosi described a detention network of scarce
provisions, overcrowded conditions, poor medical treatment and even of a scourge of
scorpions; he wrote about the random dumping of ordinary Algerians guilty of nothing
more than circulating without their identity papers and he exposed the waste caused by
exorbitant prices paid to contractors who constructed the centres.121
By November 1955, some six months following the official debut of the centres,
an administrative review requested by Soustelle raised questions about their efficacy in
the battle for loyalty to the French cause such measures were designed to buttress. The
119
CAOM 11CAB/38 undated note from Inspector General of Administration, M. C iosi.
CAOM 11CAB/41 Inspector General Ciosi report June 6, 1955
121
CAOM 11CAB/38 Minutes of meeting June 29, 1955. Reports on discussion about criticisms contained
in a report from Inspector General Ciosi
120
266
report suggested that the emergent leaders in each camp be removed to a specific camp so
as to quell their influence over other inmates. Such a move, the author of the document
argued, would allow for the moral re-education of those remaining in order to bring them
back to the French cause by means of propaganda, meetings and film screenings in
French and Arabic.122
Torture by French military officials began in the camps as early as 1955. These
abuses were not as widespread at this stage as they were surrounding the events of the
‘Battle of Algiers’ in 1958. The moderate journalist Henri Alleg was first arrested under
Soustelle’s command. 123 In 1958, Alleg would produce La Question, a literary classic
about his harrowing experience. Alleg’s work, a sensation which produced line-ups outside
its Parisian publisher’s offices before it was banned, marked a turning point in shifting
French opinion against the war.124 In the latter stages of Soustelle’s governorship, signs
emerged that the camps’ reputation had crossed the Mediterranean and was undermining
French credibility in the effort to maintain l’Algérie française. A group of North African
émigrés wrote to Soustelle from Lyon, illustrating that pockets of
sympathy for independence existed in metropolitan France already. The letter respectfully
called for a solution similar to Tunisia – a devolution to national independence, but
denounced Soustelle for his internship policies, “Votre nom restera lié à l’installation des
“centres d’hébergement” qui sont en réalité des camps de
concentration.”125
CAOM 11CAB/41 memo from director Service Central des Centres d’Hébergement November 16, 1955
CAOM 11CAB/38 July 8, 1955 Cabinet Soustelle to Minister of Interior Abel Thomas.
124
See Benjamin Stora, La gangrène et l’oubli - La mémoire de la guerre d’Algérie (Paris : La
Découverte/Poche, 1998 – originally published 1991), 56-57.
125
CAOM 11CAB/29 Open letter from Mouvement de Libération du Peuple November 19, 1955
122
123
267
News of the camps served to rally international support for the FLN and turn the
tide of opinion among French leftists against France’s military campaign to squash the
rebellion. A few years following Soutelle’s tenure as Governor General, Germaine
Tillion participated in an international effort to investigate conditions and possible human
rights abuses in camps that debuted during her former colleague’s watch. Tillion drew on
her experience as a Nazi concentration camp survivor to advocate for all prisoners on
both sides of the conflict.126 In 1957 she even undertook a dangerous mission to meet
FLN leaders in hopes of averting attacks on civilians and promote a ceasefire. Tillion
insisted on the universal application of human rights that she understood as the legacy of
the French revolution and the emergence of democratic forms of government.127 She
steadfastly adhered to universal values of liberty and human dignity. In an interview
conducted in 2000, Tillion maintained that she was unaware of any torture being
conducted by French forces during the period she served under Soustelle, but
acknowledged understanding in hindsight that such activities were underway in 1955.128
Under pressure of a widespread insurrection and acting in accordance with directions
from Paris, Jacques Soustelle abandoned the fundamental principals of human rights that
were the supposed touchstones of la mission civilsatrice in Algeria.
Hearts and Minds
Jacques Soustelle relied on his wartime experience in Mexico serving General
Charles de Gaulle in the battle for public opinion through the press.129 He wrote a
quarterly overview of the status of the reform program, identifying difficulties in
126
Germaine Tillion, À la recherché du vrai et du juste à propos rompus avec le siècle Textes réunis et
présentés par Tzveta Todorov (Paris: Seuil: 2001), 187-192.
127
Ibid; Forget and Wood, “Notice biographique,” 25; Horne, Savage Peace, 214-7.
128
Germaine Tillion, « Entretien avec Jean Lacouture » in La Traversée du mal (Paris: Aréa, 2000), 104.
129
Denis Rolland, Vichy et la France libre au Mexique: guerre, culture et propagande pendant la deuxième
guerre mondiale (Paris : l’Harmattan, 1990), 74-85.
268
controlling the message delivered by the press at home and in the Arab world as a major
area of concern.130 By late fall 1955, the written summary of a meeting regarding
“Propagande et contre propagande” expressed the Soustelle administration’s frustration
with controlling the press without resorting to “une censure véritable”. Nevertheless, the
Soustelle administration did engage in the suppression of opposition newspapers.131 In
the summary, Soustelle planned to meet with newspaper editors to encourage a more
“attitude raisonnable” on their part. The summary states that the most practical method of
obtaining favourable press would be to submit prepared articles to the press for
publication.132 Soustelle practiced this method in Mexico City during World War II with
the creation of an ersatz press agency to disseminate pro-Free French and anti-Nazi
articles in the Mexican and Latin American press.133
Soustelle also relied on his knowledge of and keen interest in cinema as part of
the propaganda effort.134 Soustelle, the movie buff and wartime propaganda master,
established La Service de Diffusion cinématographique on February 15, 1955 under the
direct command of his own office. Its administrator accepted that his team would serve
more than a technical function. In a report to the Governor General’s office a Monsieur
Murati wrote about the “varied and delicate tasks” his team would be asked to undertake
and their key role in “information and propaganda in the Moslem milieu”. Murati was
CAOM 11CAB/78 « Reformes » June 20, 1955 Bilan de L’Activité du cabinet
CAOM 11CAB/46 Le Libertaire July 14, 1955 page one articles about seizure of copies of paper in
Alger. This edition also includes an article about launching a campaign in defense of political opponents
sentenced to death in Algeria.
132
CAOM 11CAB/38 Summary of meeting held on November 3, 1955.
133
Rolland, Vichy et la France libre, 74-5; CEMCA Centre d’études mexicaines et centreaméricaines,
Centre de documentation, Ministère des affaires extérieures de France, Ciudad de México. This archive
contains all copies of Le Journal français de Mexique.
134
As a graduate student Soustelle reviewed films for leftist newspapers, evincing, for example, a particular
admiration for the ‘bad guy’ Paul Muni in his portrayal of a rough Mexican-American character in the film
Bordertown Soustelle’s review emphasizes the anti-Mexican racism which Muni’s character faced. Jacques
Soustelle, “En regardant les Écrans,” Spartacus, February 28, 1935.
Muni also portrayed Mexican political hero Benito Juarez in the film Juarez.
130
131
269
pleased that the service would fulfil such a function, but hoped the “agents” would get a
civil service upgrade with their expanded tasks in order, “servir la cause française et
l’éducation des masses en Algérie.”135 Documentary films were used in the re-education
effort of suspected FLN sympathizers in les centres d’hébergement. By the autumn of
1955, following startling setbacks in the war effort, a Centre d’Action Psychologique was
created to train officers in their approach to the Moslem community by screening
documentary films in training sessions.136
Following the departure of Tillion and other moderates from Soustelle’s cabinet
and inner circle of advisors, signs of deepening trouble spread throughout Algeria. By
July an official working for Soustelle’s cabinet predicted a defection of seemingly loyal
interlocuteurs valables in the Muslim community.137 Even the Boy Scouts were for
independence, as a letter to Soustelle from the head of the Muslim Scout association
declared,
…le jeune musulman a toujours souffert de l’équivoque du fait algérien. La
personnalité de ce pays n’a jamais été définie d’une manière satisfaisante. Une
telle équivoque est à l’origine d’une discrimination systématique qui hypothèque
lourdement l’avenir de chaque musulman algérien.138
In an effort to explain his policies and rally morale, Soustelle made a number of
radio broadcasts to the people of Algeria. With the experience he had garnered by
delivering radio lectures about Mexico from Le Musée de l’homme in an effort to
popularize ethnography in the 1930s, Soustelle employed his oratorical skills in the
CAOM 11CAB/101 February 24, 1955 memorandum from Murati to Governor General’s office
CAOM 11CAB/101 compte rendu conf. Stagiaires du CENTRE D’ACTION PSYCHOLOGIQUE
November 3, 1955
137
CAOM 11CAB/8 unsigned note of July 9, 1955 to Governor General Jacques Soustelle
138
CAOM 11CAB/7 “Affaires Musulmanes” July 7, 1955 letter to Soustelle from T. Tedjini, general
commissioner, Boy Scouts Musulmans de l’Algérie
135
136
270
propaganda campaign over the future of Algeria. The language deployed in these radio
scripts is official, almost regal in its tone, perhaps befitting the representative of an
imperial power intent on diminishing the threat posed by the rising flames throughout
Algeria. In mid-August 1955 in one such broadcast, Soustelle lay claim to progress in the
struggle for loyalty to his aims in Algeria,
Pour qui a connu l’AURES farouche et hostile de l’hiver dernier, et qui voit
aujourd’hui les partisans Chaouïa le fusil en main veiller eux-mêmes a
l’achèvement des moissons et défendre leurs mechtas contre les terroristes, il est
évident qu’un profond changement est en train de s’espérer. La population de ces
montagnes voit dans les postes lointain du bled, l’officier et le médecin se pencher
fraternellement sur ces misères; elle voit monter les murs de nos bordj, progresser
les pistes, culer l’eau. Le blé et l’orge rentrent pacifiquement aux villages et les
paysans prennent part à leur propre défense. La confiance revient. 139
In a bad situation spiralling toward outright disaster, Soustelle struck an oddly romantic
tone invoking the heroic efforts of military and medical personnel in pacifying rural areas
and strengthening loyalties to the French cause. In his radio speech of August 19, 1955
Soustelle praised the efforts of the newly formed rural police. Soustelle frequently praised
Muslim police and rural forces loyal to the French cause. In full rhetorical drive, he would
attempt to forge links between North African soldiers who had served France in both
world wars and Muslim detachments serving in the battle again the FLN. Soustelle argued
that all such loyalists were fighting for France against terrorism.140
In addition to his romantic evocation of heroic loyalties in the countryside,
Soustelle’s script for the broadcast of August 19, 1955 also demonstrated his awareness
of Tillion’s message about Algeria’s economic future. He stated that his tour enabled him
to witness the sort of changes that must occur in an industrialized, modern Algeria such
139
140
CAOM 11CAB/29 Declaration of Governor General Jacques Soustelle Radio Algérie August 19, 1955.
CAOM 11CAB/29 text of Soustelle speech of August 17, 1955.
271
as the development of a major iron deposit in development at Ouenza. Soustelle claimed
that such progress would be the “salvation” of Algeria.
Soustelle delivered that broadcast on the eve of disaster. In districts surrounding
the northern city of Philippeville, FLN militants attacked civilians of European origin and
their Moslem allies. Over 100 died at the hands of the FLN, including some women and
children. In the aftermath, most accounts agree that the French military and vigilante
groups killed more than 1,000 in reprisal.141 Many historians regard August 20, 1955 as
the end of any hopes for success of le plan Soustelle. Soustelle frantically attempted to
squelch vigilante campaigns, as the text of a telegram to Paris demonstrates,
Les évènements du 20 Août dans Nord-Constantinois font l’objet de relations
déformées ou inexactes et d’interprétations tendancieuses – STOP.
De violentes campagnes s’annoncent notamment de la part de certains élus –
STOP.142
Soustelle understood that the FLN had calculated that a disproportionate, even lawless,
French response would ultimately serve the cause of independence,
Il me revient de tout part ce matin que dans la région de Philippeville des éléments
civils européens armées pourchassent indistinctement tous les musulmans. Les
résultats sont la dispersion de la population, l’arrêt complet de la vie économique,
la fuite des fallahs dans les maquis et l’anarchie totale. Cela doit cesser
immédiatement. Je dis immédiatement…Seule les militaires et les forces de l’ordre
ont qualité de repousser les attaques e poursuivre les assaillants selon les directives
données par moi-même les 20 et 21 août. Ce qui précède constitue un ordre formel
que vous voudrez bien porter sans délai à la connaissance de tous les intéresses.143
See Alain-Gérad Slama, La guerre d’Algérie – Histoire d’une déchirure (Paris : Gallimard, 1996), 5354.
142
CAOM 11CAB/78 teletype from Jacques Soustelle to MINISTERE INTERIEUR – Cabinet – Paris
August 27, 1955
143
Jacques Soustelle, telegram Number 1486 to Prefect of Constantine August 25, 1955. From the papers
of Henri-Paul Eydoux, cited in D. Balvet, "Jacques Soustelle Et l'Algérie Française: Gaullisme Et
Antigaullisme." (PhD diss., Université Charles de Gaulle, Lille 3 2003), 201.
141
272
The situation demanded a governor with front-line political and military
experience. During World War II Soustelle was primarily concerned with information,
intelligence gathering and propaganda as he served the resistance in Mexico City,
London and, finally, Alger (Algiers). He had never been directly involved in armed
combat. The crisis of late August 1955 overwhelmed his reform plans. Soustelle argued
his case in the metropolitan press where he insisted that he was a force for the quelling of
vigilante reprisals and the restoration of republican values in Algeria. In a letter to Le
Monde, Soustelle denied French forces were engaged in brutality and complained that the
paper was giving vent to excessively negative accounts of French policies.144 Soustelle was
simultaneously relaying complaints to the prefect of Constantine about the sacking of
Moslem businesses by pied noirs and adding to the contingent of police officers under his
direct command because he was convinced that some officials were turning a blind eye
to, or even assisting, in the murderous vigilante campaigns.145
The horrendous spasm of violence surrounding August 1955 signaled further
deterioration in the political situation. Soustelle’s reform plans would be rejected by a
group of Muslim moderates, the very interlocuteurs on which such plans depended. To
Soustelle’s dismay, a group of loyalist legislators defected; the “Committee of 61”
declared that the policy of integration had been made irrelevant by the course of events
and that the French had not been serious about it in any event. Some Muslim moderates
asserted that intégration was insufficient and demanded that immediate steps be taken to
144
CAOM 11CAB/8 Soustelle letter in Le Monde September 7, 1955.
CAOM 11CAB/14 Cabinet Militaire folder. November 1955, complaint regarding sacking of Moslem
businesses forwarded by Soustelle to Constantine prefecture; CAOM 11CAB/14 SECRET telegram to
prefects of major cities September 20, 1955.
145
273
create a federal relationship between Algeria and metropolitan France.146 Federalism, the
wobbly but enduring bridge over differences in the Canadian polity, was a far off
destination in Soustelle’s thinking of 1955. Twenty years later, Soustelle would argue that
federalism would have, could have and should have been the logical outcome of a gradual
process of integration.147 However, his thinking as Governor General, and the policies of
the metropolitan government he represented, echoed the sense of cultural and political
superiority inherent in the liberal traditions of la mission civilizatrice. By the autumn of
1955, such thinking was a dangerous anachronism that cost would be reformers like
Soustelle the support of hitherto loyal Muslim supporters in Algeria. Most notably, Ferhat
Abbas, leader of a moderate political party whose nephew had been
murdered by the FLN in the violence of August 20, 1955, resigned his legislative seat and
rejected le plan Soustelle. Notes regarding Abbas’ resignation and his public disavowal
of Soustelle’s proposed reforms taken at a meeting between Abbas and members of the
French cabinet in the fall of 1955 reveal the utter abandonment of Soustelle’s reform
package by the very political figures it was designed to mollify and integrate,
Vous, français, vous attendez toujours qu’il soit trop tard pur agir…. Le fosse qui
est en train de se creuser entre musulmans et français sera tel qu’il sera impossible
de le combler…nous ne sommes pas chez nous en Algérie.
Je ne demande pas qu’il y ait immédiatement une République Algérienne….mais
il faut provoquer immédiatement, par les reformes hardies, un choc psychologique
tel, que les musulmans puissent croire que quelque chose est enfin change en
Algérie.148
146
CAOM 11CAB/8 . SECRET note sent on to Minister of the Interior September 3, 1955 about moderate
leaders such as Cheik Kerreoine calling for immediate federal status rather than “progressive integration”
favoured by Soustelle.
147
JacquesSoustelle and Odile Rudelle, Jacques Soustelle Interviews, February 19 and April 23 1979. Paris:
Université SciencesPo. Fondation nationale des sciences politiques - Service des archives d’Histoire
contemporaine, 8.
148
CAOM 11CAB/7 report on Ferhat Abbas’ meeting with French Ministers in Paris October 30, 1955.
Marked SECRET.
274
Dr. Mohammed Benjelloul, who had been promoting peaceful reform of Algeria’s status
since before World War II, turned his back on the French in his leadership of the fatal
‘Committee of 61.’ To counteract the widening, public desertion of reputable and
recognizable loyalists, Soustelle’s cabinet prepared documents of allegiance for the
imprimatur of local leaders from the Muslim community.149
An increasingly exasperated Soustelle took his case to the metropolitan press and
undertook a rhetorical combat with Le Monde defending his course of action following
the events of August 20 and decrying the betrayal of erstwhile allies such as Abbas and
Benjelloul.150 An exchange of private letters with the editor-in-chief of Le Monde is
especially revelatory. Soustelle complained about the lack of support his policies were
receiving in the paper and the sympathies he felt the paper was expressing for Mohammed
Benjelloul in his abandonment of intégration. In his riposte to Soustelle, editor Hubert
Beuve-Méry argued that censorship and the suppression of legitimate news by Soustelle’s
administration was serving neither France’s cause in Algeria nor democracy,
Cette recherche de la vérité est toujours une entreprise difficile et, dans certaines
situations la publications peut poser, elle aussi, des problèmes délicats. Mais en ce
qui concerne l’Algérie notamment, nos rédacteurs et nos chefs de service sont
amenés à se plaindre trop souvent des difficultés supplémentaires qu’ils
rencontrent dans le sens de la politique gouvernementale… Quand il s’agit non
d’échauffourées ou de combats mais de textes en provenance d’Alger, ces retards
ou ces silences pariassent encore plus inadmissibles.. La motion que les 61 ont
adoptée à Alger le 14 Décembre contre la politique « d’intégration » pouvait être
rédigée en termes excessifs ou injustes. Elle émanait en tout cas de représentants
du peuple algérien. Le 15 Décembre au soir elle n’avait pas encore été transmise
aux journaux de la métropole.151
149
CAOM 11CAB/8 statement of support for government and policy of integration from municipal leaders
of Tizi-Reniff. Most signed with fingerprints.
150
CAOM 11CAB/8 Soustelle, Le Monde letter, September 7, 1955.
151
CAOM 11CAB/46 December 17, 1955 letter from Hubert Beuve-Méry, director Le Monde to Jacques
Soustelle.
275
By late autumn 1955, Jacques Soustelle’s ambitious plans had collapsed. He had
been transformed in the course of a year into the beleaguered chief of an increasingly
desperate military regime. The assassination of Ferhat Abbas’ nephew was but one of a
series of FLN targeted assaults on anyone suspected of collaborating with the French. The
vigilantism of French civilians and municipal officials in the aftermath of le 20 Août
spiraled into a pattern of reprisals that would end in the murderous campaigns of the
Organisation Armée Secrète (OAS) in Algeria and in France itself. Late in 1955,
Soustelle was relaying intercepted death threats directed against Moslem leaders from a
‘Comité Révolutionnaire des Patriotes Français d’Algérie’ - such militant settler
organizations comprised of settlers and hard-line members of the French military - were
harbingers of the OAS. These “death sentences” were handed out to Moslem
professionals stating that they would be killed within eight days of the death of any
French (European) citizen in their town or district.152 In December 1955, Soustelle sent a
secret cable to Paris reminding his political masters that his request for 60,000 additional
troops in October had been met by a contingent one tenth that size. In the same cable,
Soustelle named fifteen Moslem officials with ties to the French administration who had
been assassinated in less than two months that autumn.153
What became of the reformer? Some speculate that Soustelle’s reformist agenda
was overwhelmed by military requirements and that the departure of the likes of
Germaine Tillion from his cabinet and administrative entourage was a reaction to the
metamorphosis of Soustelle’s reformist zeal into the posture of a war governor. Some
152
CAOM 11CAB/8 November 2, 1955 ARRET DE MORT with marginalia from Soustelle telling a
deputy that the information had been handed over to police.
153
CAOM 11CAB/38 telegram from Soustelle to Minister of Interior, December 19, 1955.
276
observers have argued that Soustelle’s conversion into a man of the sword was soldered
firmly by the personal trauma he experienced with the civilian casualties of the FLN
attacks of August 1955.154 It is a thesis that Jacques Soustelle would reject for the
remainder of his days and first fulminated against in an anti de Gaulle screed that
Soustelle produced early in his self exile from France in 1962,
…je saisirai cette occasion répéter une dernière fois que ma propre position sur le
problème algérien, contrairement a tant de déformations et de calomnies
répandues, était et demeure fondamentalement rationnelle et en concordance avec
la réalité historique, ethnique, religieuse, économique, de l’Algérie. Il est devenu
courant de raconter que j’aurais trouvé à Aïn-Abid a El-Alia mon chemin de
Damas, et que la vue des pauvres corps mutilés de femmes et d’enfants le 20 août
1955, m’aurait fait abandonner une politique « libérale ».., Une fois encore, je
proteste contre ces mensonges. C’est ca, raison, fondée sur la connaissance, qui
m’a dicte mes opinions et ma conduite.155
Other witnesses to Soustelle’s final days as Governor General disagree with that
self assessment. On January 22, 1956, the great Algerian-French writer Albert Camus
held a public forum in support of a ‘civil truce’ in Algeria. Greeted by death threats from
the French colonial right, Camus gathered a cross section of intellectuals and public
figures from all Algerian communities to join him in a call for both sides to stop killing
civilians. It was to be Albert Camus’ last public appearance on the issue in Algeria in his
lifetime. Germaine Tillion attended the meeting,
La guerre algéro-française devint cependant vite féroce mais au tout début de 1956
(exactement le 22 janvier a 17 heures, selon mon agenda) je me suis cependant trouvée
dans la salle dite « du Progrès » ou Albert Camus plaidait passionnément pour la trêve
civile ; Ferhat Abbas le rejoignait sur l’estrade, et le service d’ordre fut assure par des
étudiants musulmans dont beaucoup étaient peut-être inscrits au FLN. Dans la rue, on
entendait des voix français criant « a mort Camus »…156
Horne, Savage War, 117, 120-4; Droz and Lever, Guerre de l’Algérie, 74.
Jacques Soustelle, L’Espérance Trahie (Paris: Editions de l’Alma, 1962), 255.
156
Tillion, L’Afrique bascule, 60.
154
155
277
After the brave, but largely futile, meeting Camus met with Governor General Jacques
Soustelle. Neither of the principals left a detailed account of this encounter, but Camus’
close friend Emmanuel Roblès, who was with Camus in Algeria at the time, later
described it in a memoir,
Le mardi après nombre d’entrevues et de démarches, notre comite se réunit au complet
dans un salon du Cercle. Camus nous rend compte de ses entrevues, et surtout, de sa
conversation avec Soustelle. Celui-ci s’est declaré intéressé de notre action, mais la
notion de l’innocence est a préciser. Et puis, il y a les « demi-pensionnaires »,
travailleurs le jour, combattants la nuit.157
Significantly, Camus and Soustelle appeared to have had some common ground despite
Soustelle’s suspicion that some of Camus’ Muslim allies might have been more
sympathetic to the FLN than Camus presumed.
Camus and Soustelle disagreed about whether Soustelle became a hard line militarist in
Algeria in response to FLN terrorism. In a letter to his friend Andre Rosfelder, written
after his return from Algeria in pursuit of the civil truce, Camus expressed great
frustration with Soustelle who had just stepped down as Governor General, suggesting
that Soustelle’s turn of mind signified a devastating lost opportunity for the sort of
federalism that Camus imagined as a way out of the conflict. Camus hoped for a quick
political integration which could lead inevitably, he thought, to a federal arrangement
between France and Algeria. Camus thought Soustelle arrived with the right idea but
stalled in response to the military situation,
Après réflexion je n’ai aucune confiance (en Soustelle). Vous pouvez faire état auprès
de vos amis de ce que je vous dis. Qu’ils essaient seulement de comprendre qu’un
homme comme moi, qui n’a jamais connu le découragement , et qui a horreur de toute
complaisance, ne vous écrit ceci sans raison. Je suis déchiré, voilà la vérité.158
157
Emmanuel Roblès, Les rives du fleuve bleu (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1990) 232.
Albert Camus letter to André Rosfelder, February 26, 1956. As cited in Olivier Todd, Albert Camus –
une vie (Paris: Gallimard, 1996) 634-5.
158
278
Camus was not the only great French intellectual “torn” by Algeria. In the years
following his departure as Governor General Soustelle’s convictions about Algeria would
lead him, for a time, toward anti-democratic, even murderous opposition to Algerian
independence. After de Gaulle’s abrupt about face on keeping Algeria, Jacques Soustelle,
the product of liberal, democratic, republican values, insisted that his plan could have
saved the day if only he had been given sufficient time and the French had held their
nerve.159 Soustelle defied overwhelming evidence that the majority of French citizens,
exhausted by eight years of warfare, approved independence: the public ratified de
Gaulle’s plan in a national referendum in April 1962. We don’t know if FLN terrorism
turned Soustelle the reformer into a hardened advocate of a military solution. His
biographer Bernard Ullmann shows that the betrayal that Soustelle felt at the hands of his
former chef and father figure Charles de Gaulle over the abandonment of Algérie française
launched Soustelle along a dark path of association with outlaws in plotting an
assassination attempt on de Gaulle in 1961.160 With that association and with Soustelle’s
refusal to accept the democratically expressed view of the French majority about the
outcome of the Algerian conflict, Jacques Soustelle, an intellectual descendant of les
lumières would, at least temporarily, refute and tarnish the values he claimed to uphold as
both a political figure and social scientist.
In leaving Algeria in February 1956 with his term as Governor General complete,
Soustelle was accompanied to his ship by a crowd of thousands of pied-noirs who
belatedly saw in Soustelle their figure of possible collective redemption. Newsreel
159
Soustelle and Rudelle, Soustelle Interviews, February 19 and April 23 1979. Paris: Université
SciencesPo. Fondation nationale des sciences politiques - Service des archives d’Histoire contemporaine,
8-9; 28-40.
160
Ullmann, mal aimé, 332-9.
279
footage and photojournalism reveal an extraordinary scene in a simultaneous outpouring of
admiration and some sort of collective regret about what Soustelle’s departure
represented.161 Scant months later, Jacques Soustelle emotionally recounted the moment in
his instant memoir of his governorship. He foreshadowed his increasingly irrational
response to subsequent events in Algérie française in a prosaic conflation of patriotism
tied to Alger’s place in the saga of French imperialism, its critical role in World War II as
de Gaulle’s final base before liberation and Soustelle’s own hardening political
convictions,
Bien des souvenirs d’une époque où l’on mourait beaucoup où la lutte signifiait
quelque chose, me remontaient au coeur. Alger! Notre capitale dans la phase
décisive de notre histoire récente! Qui pourrait consentir à y voir flotter aucun
autre drapeau que le nôtre?162
Conclusion
Scott and Soustelle were unlikely candidates for the leading roles each would play
in modern Canadian and French history. Scott, the son of a Protestant minister, seemingly
more given to a love of nature, poetry and music than politics, became a central,
galvanizing force of Canadian Indian policy for more than a quarter century. Soustelle, a
working class prodigy from south-western France who was selected by age seventeen for
a brilliant academic future, became a dauphin and then a scourge of France’s most
significant military and political leader of the twentieth century. Each life bears witness
to the ideas expressed by Julien Benda in 1927 who declared that in an age of ‘the
betrayal of the intellectuals’ the needs of the nation-state would trump ethics.
Fonds “Terrorisme et répression,” and “Lettre à la posterité,” scrapbooks of clippings by French
Algerian Gilbert Perez c. 1955-1962. See for example clippings from L’Echo d’Alger, February 2 & 3,
1956, Centre de documentation Camus, Cité du Livre, Aix-en-Provence; CORPUS Algérie-décolonisation,
Inatheque, Bibiothèque nationale de France Mitterand, Paris.
162
Jacques Soustelle, Aimée et souffrante Algérie (Paris: Librairie Plon, 1956), 2.
161
280
7. Conclusion: Past is Present
Epilogue
Figure 21 Parliament Hill at dawn, from Victoria Island Ottawa, June 11, 2008 (photo
by James Cullingham)
Ottawa, June 11, 2008
A crowd gathered outside the House of Commons in Ottawa, Canada. A giant
video screen on a flat-bed trailer hitched to a pick-up truck was in position for an
overflow crowd of curious onlookers that gathered waiting to hear Prime Minister
Stephen Harper speak to Parliament. Inside the Parliament building, Indigenous elders,
some accompanied by their grandchildren, filed into an upper lobby that leads to the
public gallery overlooking the House floor. Prime Minister Stephen Harper had decided
that he would apologize to the Indigenous people of Canada on behalf of all Canadians
for the abuses and injustices of the residential school system.
As Harper rose to offer Canada’s apology, in the gallery where I stood, Native
elders, their children and grandchildren looked down upon the Prime Minister. An elderly
281
woman stood at her seat looking directly at Harper while clutching an eagle feather in her
fist. A young man in the same gallery section caressed a skin drum. On the floor of the
House of Commons, members of parliament and the leaders of Aboriginal organizations
turned their attention to the Prime Minister as he rose.1 When Harper acknowledged the
presence of Aboriginal elders in the gallery all of Parliament erupted in loud applause. In
his preamble, Harper gave direct thanks to the leader of the New Democratic Party Jack
Layton for influencing his thinking about the issue. In his sober address delivered in a
strong, clear voice, Harper said in part,
The government recognizes that the absence of an apology has been an
impediment to healing and reconciliation. Therefore, on behalf of the government
and all Canadians, I stand before you, in this chamber so central to our life as a
country, to apologize to the aboriginal peoples for Canada’s role in the residential
school system. To the approximately 80,000 living former students, and all family
members and communities, the government now recognizes that it was wrong to
forcibly remove children from their homes and we apologize for having done this.
We now recognize that it was wrong to separate children from rich and vibrant
cultures and traditions, that it created a void in many lives and communities, and
we apologize for having done this…We now recognize that, far too often, these
institutions gave rise to abuse or neglect and were inadequately controlled, and we
apologize for failing to protect you…2
The Prime Minister thereby apologized for one of the principal policies that Duncan
Campbell Scott had willingly and dutifully implemented as a senior civil servant for the
government of Canada.
At dawn on the morning of the apology, Aboriginal spiritual leaders, elders,
residential school survivors and their supporters had gathered on Victoria Island in the
1
Leaders of Aboriginal organizations were granted unprecedented access to the floor of the House of
Commons for the occasion by agreement of all parties in the House.
2
Prime Minister Stephen Harper, “Residential Schools Apology”, transcript printed in The National Post,
June 12, 2008 page A25. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ryC74bbrEE Accessed September 2009.
282
Ottawa River below Parliament Hill for a sunrise ceremony seeking serenity and national
reconciliation.
Figure 22 Sunrise ceremony, Victoria Island, Ottawa, June 11, 2008. (photo by James
Cullingham)
Paris, June 18, 2010
Solemn commemorations marked the seventieth anniversary of the 1940 “appel”
that Charles de Gaulle transmitted from London letting les français and the world know
that he had decided to lead the resistance to the Nazi occupation of France. Across the
Atlantic Ocean, a military attaché to the French ambassador responded to that “appel”.
Twenty-eight-year-old Jacques Soustelle sent word from the Mexican capital that he
would to serve de Gaulle. Soustelle joined Paul Rivet, Germaine Tillion, and others
associated with le Musée de l’Homme in joining the resistance.
283
At the city hall of Paris, a huge photo of de Gaulle during World War II framed
against hundreds of smaller photos of those who had served the resistance towered over
the square. Media was replete with anniversary coverage of de Gaulle’s BBC broadcast
announcing the creation of the France libre movement.3
Figure 23 Charles de Gaulle portrait Hotel de Ville, Paris June 2010 (photo by
James Cullingham)
« De Gaulle crève l’écran – Radio, télévision, livres BD, iTunes… La commémoration du 18 Juin relance
les produits éditoriaux sur le Général, » LE FIGARO, 18 juin, 2010, pages 32 et 38; « Comme en 40 –
Soixante-dix ans âpres l’appel du 18 Juin, ‘Libération’ refait les actualités du jour. Où grande et petite
histoires se répondent., » Libération, 18 juin, 2010, supplément ‘SPÉCIAL 18 JUIN’.
3
284
The anniversary capped a resurgence in French fascination with de Gaulle that coincided
with the neo-Gaullist presidency of Nicolas Sarkozy. In 2008, Sarkozy himself
inaugurated l’Historial Charles-de-Gaulle, a new multi-media digital museum at les
Invalides defense establishment in the centre of Paris.4 The digital video displays in the
museum often feature Jacques Soustelle, most notably by de Gaulle’s side in Algeria
when the general visited following his return to power in 1958. At that time, de Gaulle
vowed to maintain l’Algérie française. Within two years, de Gaulle had changed his mind
on Algeria and fired a disobedient Soustelle from his cabinet.5 By 1962, with the dawning
of an independent Algeria, Soustelle was an outlaw conspiring with de Gaulle’s would be
assassins. That part of the de Gaulle – Soustelle saga is not included in the displays at
l’Historial Charles-de-Gaulle.
The consideration of the lives and times and works of Duncan Campbell Scott and
Jacques Soustelle does not afford simple answers. Each man was complicated and, at
times, contradictory. Scott’s lesser-known literary work displays his complex views of
Indigenousness. Despite the self-assurance about Indian policy Scott expressed before
parliamentary committees and in his departmental correspondence, a careful reading of
some of his literary output and personal correspondence reveals a more ambivalent, even
psychologically troubled perspective about his role. Jacques Soustelle is part of an ongoing
conversation among historians and political scientists about the decline of
French imperial power in the modern era.
4
Grégoire Allix, « MUSÉES - Nicolas Sarkozy inaugure cet Historial multimédia ce vendredi Aux
Invalides, un ‘monument audiovisuel’ est dédié à De Gaulle, » Le Monde, 23 février, 2008. Section
Culture&vous, Page 23.
5
Bernard Ullmann, Jacques Soustelle le mal aimé (Paris: Plon, 1995), 297-8; Ian Lustick, Unsettled States,
Disputed Lands: Britain and Ireland, France and Algeria, Israel and the West Bank-Gaza (Ithaca, N.Y.:
Cornell University Press, 1993), 286; Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962 (New
York New York Review of Books, 2006 Originally published 1977), 366, 374.
285
Soustelle was not merely a hard-line defender of the French presence in Algeria.
In steadfastly conceiving and attempting to implement the reform package that became
known as le plan Soustelle, he demonstrated remarkable energy, imagination and
courage. At the same time, Soustelle seemed to suffer from a blindness to the dark legacy
of French rule, and a willingness to draw on the dark arts learned during his war-time
experience as a resistance organizer to steer his administration to violations of the very
norms of “civilization” Soustelle claimed to defend.
Self-Repudiation and Shame in the Writings of Duncan Campbell Scott
It is understandable that many literary critics who have considered Duncan
Campbell Scott focus primarily on his poetry. Poetry forms the bulk of his fictional
creative output and the Indian poems present a complex shaft for exploration and
interpretation given Scott’s civil service duties and the historical (and current) tension in
Canada over Aboriginal rights and the entire dynamic of Aboriginal-settler relations. As
Stan Dragland, Northrop Frye and Ian McKay have pointed out, Scott’s Indian poems
often express a settler society’s horror, fear and miscomprehension of Aboriginal people
in Canada.6 In addition, the poems generally share the certitude of Scott’s civil service
prose as to the ultimate fate of the savage Indian, destined to be relegated to the memory
(and poetry) of a dynamic, technologically superior Canadian master race.
One of Scott’s short stories, his unpublished novel and a deeply felt letter to his
second wife reveal, perhaps, a conflicted and layered, approach to the Indian question in
6
Stan Dragland, Floating Voice: Duncan Campbell Scott and the Literature of Treaty 9 (Concord, ON:
Anansi, 1994), 155-173; Northrop Frye, The Bush Garden; Essays on the Canadian Imagination (Toronto:
Anansi, 1971), 149, 219; Ian Mackay, “Canada as a Long Liberal Revolution” in Liberalism and
Hegemony: Debating the Canadian Liberal Revolution, Jean-François Constant and Michel Ducharme
(Toronto-Buffalo-London: University of Toronto Press, 2009), 353, 381.
286
Canada. These instances reflect some recognition that Canadian progress during Scott’s
lifetime inflicted grievous harm on aboriginal peoples and even suggestions that
Canadian society itself might be poorer because of the attempted erasure of Aboriginal
mores and ways of life.
Any self-examination that Scott undertook did not stem from religious ethics or
sense of formal Christian charity. His work required that he liaise with Christian
denominations in the running of residential schools, but Scott did so as a matter of public
policy rather than personal religious conviction. Although he was a parson’s son, Scott
was not active in any form of organized religion in his adult life. Scott told the critic E.K.
Brown that institutional Christianity was part of his past,
I have left the religion of my youth behind me, so have all the other Methodists in
the country, but I have not gone into the United Church, but into the wilderness,
and I do not feel at all lost in it.7
It is clear that Scott did have faith in intellectual progress. As he argued in his
“Poetry and Progress” address to the Royal Society of Canada in 1920, Scott imagined
that in his idealized Canada, a nation borrowing from British tradition with an important
French speaking minority, and therefore differentiated from the American republic,
would advance in arts and science in a maturing, distinct national identity. His belief in
progress was underscored in the essay by a dovetailing of scientific method with poetic
expression,
The mental process by which a poet develops the germ of his poem and perfects it
is analogous to the process by which a mathematician develops his problem from
7
Personal communication between Duncan Campbell Scott and E.K. Brown as cited in E.K. Brown,
“Duncan Campbell Scott: A Memoir,” in Responses and Evaluations: Essays on Canada, edited by David
Staines (Toronto: McLelland and Stewart, 1977), 130-131; also in Duncan Campbell Scott, Selected Poems
of Duncan Campbell Scott (Toronto: The Ryerson Press, 1951), xxviii.
287
vagueness to a complete demonstration, or to the mental process whereby the
shadow of the truth apprehended by the biologist becomes proven fact.8
Having aligned himself, the poet, with the progressive aims of science, Scott then argued
that the art of poetry in a modernizing Canada could achieve an artistic expression that
could fuse national material and spiritual growth. Scott argued that an accomplished poet
possesses a power akin to divine creation,
This spirit endeavours to interpret the world in new terms of beauty, to find
unique symbols, images and analogies for the varied forms of life. It absorbs
science and philosophy, and anticipates social progress in terms of ideality. It is
rare, but it is ever present, for what is it but the flickering and pulsation of the
force that created the world?9
Paradoxically for an author who claimed a rational, scientific basis for his poetic
process, phantoms, ghosts and nightmare states figure often in his poetry. The sort of
contradiction between the simultaneous politics of removal/exclusion/repression and
assimilation into ‘civilization’ that riddled Canadian Indian policy also bedeviled Scott’s
poetics. His poetic themes are rarely scientific or materialistic. Scott’s poetry often dealt
with spirituality, dream states and psychic horror. As noted in Chapter 3, among the
Indian poems, “Powassan’s Drum” depicts the nightmarish state provoked by an
intellectual incapacity to comprehend forms of Native spirituality.
Yet at other moments in Scott’s oeuvre, the sense of alienation in a natural world
inhabited and defined by the presence of Aboriginal peoples is suffused by a degree of
comfort. In Scott’s Untitled Novel, ca. 1905, the hero Robin Garrabant, the illegitimate
son of a prosperous logger, has achieved business and political success as a member of
Duncan Campbell Scott, “Poetry and Progress” in The Circle of Affection (Toronto: McClelland and
Stewart, 1947), 124.
9
Ibid, 137.
8
288
the Canadian parliament. With the death of a young woman that he had loved, Garrabant
takes leave of his parliamentary duties for a week to seek solace in the Gatineau Hills,
Two days later he had pitched his tents on the shores of Lake Achigan, nine miles
east of Maniwaki. He was literally in the wilderness, the lumbermen had cut and
carried off the best pine, but there was no settlement near him, not even a
squatter’s cabin, for many miles.10
The rivers and lakes of the Gatineau were the sites for the canoe trips that Scott took with
his friend the poet Archibald Lampman. The unpublished novel reveals Scott’s
familiarity with the region,
In a few hours he grew to be but an item in this tranquil life, the loons fished and
startled the heights with their ecstatic laughter, the wild geese played before their
nests in the cool of early night, the beaver worked confidently at his dams, the
deer came down with the dew to drink of the cool water and stamped upon the
hard sand, the lake, like a giant mirror, took every change of sky, every alteration
in colour of rock and wood, and he, taking up his part in this wild life, paddled,
swam, fished , and walked for hours through the old roads that were paths of sleep
and oblivion so deep were they covered with moss. One morning he stood in the
midst of an Indian camp; long ago they had cured venison there and the rude
cedar cleavers, the smoke-frames and rolls of birch-bark were still upon the
ground. Here were the relics of savage life, and it came to him curiously as a fact
illustrated simultaneously by a thousand incidents from his past life that he, like
these people, had been successful where he accepted and used natural
opportunities.11
On this occasion Scott’s hero self-identified with an Aboriginal past. There were
no living Aboriginal people present at the fictional campsite. Scott’s depiction of
Garrabant at an abandoned Indian campsite evokes an Indigenousness that provided
inspiration, comfort and guidance to those alive in a settler present. Scott, the novelist,
summoned images of a vanishing race as inspirational while at the same time engaging in
10
Duncan Campbell Scott, Untitled Novel, ca. 1905 (Moonbeam, ON; Penumbra Press/|Coach House
Press, 1979), 297.
11
Ibid, 298.
289
his ‘day job’ of ridding Aboriginal peoples from the body politic of a progressing
Canadian nation.
If the Untitled Novel hints at some familiarity with the surroundings and ways of
life of aboriginal peoples, it offers no clues as to Scott’s feelings about his particular
responsibility in the settler-aboriginal dynamic of his day and civil service career. It is in a
short story where one can detect the closest thing to an expression of regret, remorse and
even self-abnegation over the matter in Scott’s fictional work. “Expiation” was first
published in 1923 in Scott’s collection The Witching of Elspie: A Book of Stories.12 In
this short tale set in 1808, a Scottish trader named Forbes Macrimmon is engaged by the
Hudson’s Bay Company at Missanabie Post. At that time, the Hudson’s Bay Company
was pitted in competition with “the French company”, the North West Company, with its
headquarters in Montreal.
Missanabie Post is located in area that Scott knew well having traveled
extensively in the James Bay regions of Ontario in 1905 and 1906 on the Treaty 9
expedition. The main Indian character in the story, Daniel Wascowin, takes his name
from the cook who accompanied Scott and his fellow Treaty 9 commissioners in the
summer of 1905. The real Daniel Wascowin was also subject of one of Scott’s
photographic portraits taken that summer, shot in profile seated by the hull of an
overturned birch bark freighter canoe.13
In “Expiation,” the ‘great hunter’ Daniel Wascowin is Macrimmon’s servant and
his ally and principal asset in the contest with the usurping French trader, Pierre Loudet,
12
Duncan Campbell Scott, The Witching of Elspie: A Book of Stories (New York: Doran, 1923), 101-11;
also Selected Stories of Duncan Campbell Scott, Edited and with an Introduction by Glenn Clever (Ottawa:
University of Ottawa Press: Ottawa, 1987), 103-110.
13
Stan Dragland, Floating Voice: Duncan Campbell Scott and the Literature of Treaty 9 (Concord, ON:
House of Anansi, 1994), 140.
290
His chief hope lay in his servant Daniel Wascowin. Daniel was almost a pure
Indian, but there was a little white blood in him. He was a great hunter, who
always took thrice as many skins as any one else, and his prowess gave him a
position of control over the other Indians.14
Macrimmon’s short-lived advantage over Loudet is due to Daniel Wascowin’s expertise
and loyalty. The partnership between Macrimmon and Wascowin is tested one evening
when Macrimmon drinks “deep in the French company’s rum” in the company of Loudet.
In a drunken state Macrimmon catches sight of an HBC copper bottomed pail in Loudet’s
quarters. Such items were precious trading goods coveted by the best Indian fur trappers.
Macrimmon in an angry hung-over state then accuses Daniel Wascowin of trading with the
enemy. In a macabre turn, Macrimmon fires a pistol shot on each side of Wascowin’s
head to teach him a painful lesson. The scarred and deafened Wascowin leaves
Missanabie Post. Deprived, by his own angry actions, of Daniel Wascowin’s guidance and
his influence over Indian traders, Macrimmon’s trade declines. ‘His’ Indians defect
to the French and Macrimmon is demoted, shamefully, by the company.
Three springs later, following his disgrace, Macrimmon hears that a weakened
Daniel Wascowin and his wife have returned from their trapping grounds. Pathetically,
the wife can only proffer three mink skins of very little value because her husband is ill
and incapable of hunting successfully because he is deaf due to the damage wrought by
Macrimmon’s angry outburst. Macrimmon goes to find his old friend,
Daniel had crawled out of his canoe, and lay at the landing-place, unable to move.
There was just a spark of spirit left in the body of bone and skin. He tried to smile
as Macrimmon bent over him. On his forehead he saw the mark he had put there –
the two crescents made by the hot pistol-barrels, blackened by powder as if
tattooed. Yielding up at that moment everything of self there was in him,
Macrimmon lifted the Indian in his arms, carried him to the house, and put him in
his own bed…
14
Scott, Selected Stories, 104.
291
In the morning light the two men could only look helplessly into each
other’s eyes; and in a little while two of the eyes were darkened.15
Following Daniel Wascowin’s death, the story concludes hauntingly, as it begins,
with the specter of a grieving Macrimmon wandering alone in the community wearing
the three tanned mink pelts, “like a fillet bound upon his brow.” Scott writes that the
meager skins dangling bizarrely from Macrimmon’s head, “seemed to him symbols of the
grievous wrong.” 16
In “Expiation,” Scott created a character in a position of power over Indians who
greatly regrets a wrong he has committed. The story is almost singular in Scott’s fictional
work for its representation of a friendship between a white man and an Indian.
Macrimmon comes to the tragic, guilt-ridden realization that he has unjustly brutalized
and mortally wounded his only ally and friend in the deep Canadian bush. This fictional
relationship stands in stark contrast to the civil servant who haughtily dismissed
Aboriginal opponents of Canadian Indian policy.
There is another hint of self-examination about Indian policy in Scott’s written
work. It is found the letters written to the young Elise Aylen. Two years prior to his
retirement from the civil service, Scott stayed at The Empress Hotel in Victoria in 1930
on departmental business. At that time, Scott and the department were vigorously
attacking the “potlatch” in British Columbia and actively resisting Aboriginal claims to
land in the province. In a page-long philosophical outburst attached to a short letter on
Empress Hotel letterhead with a circle marked “my room” playfully scrawled on the
letterhead’s illustration of the hotel, Scott delivered a cri de coeur to the young woman he
was courting in Ottawa,
15
16
Ibid, 109-110.
Ibid, 110.
292
The presence of the mystery of life & the universe is intense. It may become a
solace. If the mystery were solved for an individual that life would have lost all
flavour, if the solution became a possession of the race mankind would cease to
exist – To search it out so eagerly & forcefully becomes a torment But without
hope of knowing the secret of being, what joy to feel oneself in the flow & very
essence of the mystery, content to have this unresolvable secret between oneself
and the Master of Life This quiescence will result in greater in greater receptivity
and The soul with further messages, hints, intuitions from the fresh center of all
feeling that will surpass any knowledge that it could gain by searching for
positive knowledge. Then why suffer dear Elise? I ask a question I cannot answer.
For a mind and a heart like yours there should be an equipoise and an agreement
but the lack of physical strength comes between them. I feel foolish in writing this
as I am not bringing help with full hands. My philosophy after a life of drift is no
consolation to one who is young & who wants sweetness and activity – I know
now that that I have never fought against anything nor worked for anything but
just accepted & drifted from point to point. I have dimly felt that if I worked &
protested & resisted I should be wrecked – so maybe you will understand why
with some gifts I have done so little – this confession will not help you and I seem
to be treating you like a restless child – ‘Now be quiet Elise!’ & that sort of
admonition – I think – that somehow & likely sooner than we think you will
achieve a greater happiness – D.17
The then almost 70-year-old Scott made his confession of moral impotence to his 27year-old girlfriend. Was he writing about his role in Canadian Indian policy? What is the
source of such anguish in a man writing two years prior to his civil service retirement
about his “life of drift” during which he “never fought against anything or worked for
anything but just accepted” because “I have dimly felt that if I worked & protested &
resisted I should be wrecked.”? He may have been trying to impress his young girlfriend
or genuinely grieving over his career of attaching Indigenous peoples. The answer is
unknowable. Yet, in both scenarios, he reveals a recognition that his actions were not
honourable.
17
Duncan Campbell Scott, letter to Elise Aylen, Empress Hotel, Victoria, BC , November 23, 1930. LACBAC, LMS-0204, Box 1, Folder 4.
293
Jacques Soustelle and the Intellectual Tradition of the FrancoAlgerian conflict
Notre conviction est faite. Oui, le déploiement de la force française est juste : pour
protéger les uns et les autres contre la Terreur. Il faut que cette force juste aille
jusqu'à la vraie victoire : la pacification des cœurs. Cette victoire ne sera pas celle
du passe : c’est dans l’élan hardi de larges reformes économiques, sociales et
politiques que se réalisera en Algérie une véritable communauté.18
- Jacques Soustelle Le terrorisme est aussi une erreur quant à ses conséquences. Son premier résultat,
en effet, et de fermer la bouche aux Français libéraux de l’Algérie et par
conséquent, de renforcer le parti de la réaction et de la répression. Ceux qui, sur
les lieux - mêmes, pourraient faire entendre la voix de la raison (et le gouverneur
général lui-même) se voient imposer silence au nom de l’instituteur assassiné, du
médecin blessé, du passant égorgé et des écoles incendiées.19
- Albert Camus Les gens qui parlent d’abandon sont des imbéciles: il n’y a pas à abandonner ce
que nous n’avons jamais possédé. Il s’agit, tout au contraire, de construire avec
les Algériens des relations nouvelles entre une France libre et une Algérie libérée.
Mais n’allons pas, surtout, nous laisser détourner de notre tâche par la
mystification réformiste. Le néo-colonialiste est un niais qui croit qu’on peut
aménager le système coloniale – ou un malin qui propose des réformes parce qu’il
sait qu’elles sont inefficaces.20
- Jean-Paul Sartre On aurait pu abréger la guerre de plusieurs années, cela n’aurait rien change quant
au résultât : quand un pays évolue vers l’indépendance, c’est comme une
avalanche, vous ne l’arrêtez pas. L’Algérie serait doc allée quand même jusqu’au
fond du val de l’indépendance.21
- Germaine Tillion -
The debate over Algeria became a nasty family feud among intellectuals in la
métropole. It was a feud that Jacques Soustelle waded into with conviction and, at times,
18
Jacques Soustelle, excerpted from his “papier” enclosed in letter to Paul Rivet. March 30, 1956, MNHN,
2 APIC SOUS
19
Albert Camus, “Terrorisme et répression,” L’Express, 9 juillet, 1955, 4.
20
Jean-Paul Sartre, Situations V: Colonialisme et néo-colonialisme (Paris: Gallimard, 1964) pp.47-48
Originally published in Les Temps Modernes, No. 123, mars-avril 1956. Intervention dans un Meeting
“pour la paix en Algérie”.
21
Germaine Tillion, À la recherché du vrai et du juste: À propos rompus avec le siècle (Paris: Seuil, 2001),
41.
294
venom. Following his return to France in 1956 at the end of his administration, Soustelle
did not pause. He quickly published a memoir of his year-long sojourn as GovernorGeneral.22 In Aimée Et Souffrante Algérie Soustelle argued for a maintenance of le plan
Soustelle by a new leftist government. When he appeared on television after the book was
published he drew explicit links between his impressions of the situation in Algeria with
the expertise he had gained in the 1930s as a doctoral student in Mexico.23 He
argued passionately that intégration based on Mexican indigenismo would be vindicated.
Unlike Camus, who believed that Soustelle, himself, squandered France’s last
chance at redemption in Algeria, Germaine Tillion believed the point of no return was
reached following Soustelle’s departure. Tillion pointed to the decision by President Guy
Mollet and Soustelle’s successor Robert Lacoste, both socialists, to grant full police
powers to the French military in Algeria. In her final years, Germaine Tillion still
despaired over that decision which marked for her an irrevocable end to France’s hopes
of a « civil truce » and peace along the lines championed by Camus.24
By 1956, erstwhile friends Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre had already famously
parted company following a 1952 feud in print over the inhumane excesses of Soviet
communism. Sartre clung to a belief that the inevitable correctness of Marxist thought
meant the overarching socialist project must be defended regardless. Camus believed that
terror itself was an inevitable result of rigid Marxist ideology. Camus also believed, as
Soustelle did, that Moscow’s allies in the decolonizing world like Algeria’s FLN were
22
Jacques Soustelle, Aimée Et Souffrante Algérie (Paris: Plon, 1956).
Jacques Soustelle interviewed on “Lectures pour tous” by Pierre Desgroupes about Sosutelle’s book
Aimée et souffrante Algérie, December 19, 1956, Inathèque, BNF – Mitterand, Paris
24
Germaine Tillion, L'Afrique Bascule Vers l'Avenir (Paris: Tirésias, 1999), 61.
23
295
terrorists rather than freedom fighters. At the height of the Cold War, Camus linked
Algerian liberation movements to the threat of Soviet tyranny,
..averti depuis longtemps des réalités Algériennes, je ne puis non plus approuver
une politique de démission qui abdonnerait le people arabe à une plus grande
misère, arracherait de ses racines séculaires le peuple français de l’Algérie et
favoriseraient seulement, sans profit pour personne, le nouvel impérialisme qui
menace la liberté de la France et de l’Occident.25
As an enthusiasm for decolonization and sympathy with the F.L.N. gained support among
leftists like Sartre, Camus grew ever more uneasy,
Après tout, Gandhi a prouvé qu’on pouvait lutter pour son people, et vaincre, sans
cesser un seul jour de rester estimable. Quelle que soit la cause que l’on defend,
elle restera toujours déshonorée par le massacre d’une foule innocente où le tueur
sait d’avance qu’il atteindre la femme et l’enfant.26
Sartre lambasted “notre réaliste au coeur tendre” for ill-considered aspirations of reform
in Algeria. Sartre was clearly taking aim at Camus, Soustelle and all other humanitarian
liberals while not naming them,
Et pourtant il est impossible de commencer les transformations économiques parce que
la misère et le désespoir des Algériens sont l’effet direct et nécessaire du colonialisme et
qu’on ne les supprimer jamais tant que le colonialisme durera. C’est que savant tous les
Algériens conscients. Et tous sont d’accord avec ce mot d’un Musulman; “Un pas
en avant, deux pas en arrière. Voilà la réforme coloniale.27
Sartre the urbane, privileged Parisian intellectual fancied that he made common cause
with the oppressed of the colonized world. His anti-colonial writings are a screed against
French intervention in Africa and Asia. He argued that effective partnerships between la
métropole and Algeria could only be forged following liberation.28 Unlike Camus, who
Camus, Actuelles III “Avant-propos”, 11.
Camus, Actuelles III “Avant-propos”, 17.
27
Jean-Paul Sartre, Situations V, 40.
28
Jean-Paul Sartre, Situations V ,“Portrait du colonisé précedé du Portrait du colonisateur de Albert
Memmi,” 52 (Originally published in Les Temps Modernes, Nos 137-138, juillet - août 1957).
25
26
296
claimed he could never approve of violence against civilians by any party, Sartre came to
embrace the violence of decolonization. Sartre and his companion Simone de Beauvoir
ridiculed Camus’ call for a civil truce because in their assessment French colonialism had
been victimizing Algerian civilians for 126 years.29
Sartre’s anti-colonial writings have a scintilla of secular religion about them. For
a contemporary reader, his confidence in liberation movements amounts to blind faith. To
his credit, he does not shy from the devastation of Native economies and culture caused
by the favouring of settler interests. In this regard, Sartre proved capable of exposing
French colonial depredations and cruelty in Algeria with a clarity that Soustelle and
Camus seemed incapable of doing.
The polemic between Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre was echoed in a highly
publicized sparring match between Jacques Soustelle and the philosopher Raymond Aron.
Aron’s ‘abandonment’ (to use Soustelle’s phrase) of French Algeria, was particularly
stinging to Soustelle. Aron, like Soustelle, was considered to be a man of the
centre. It was one thing to have well known leftists such as Sartre and his partner Simone
de Beauvoir embrace Frantz Fanon and the FLN, it was quite another for Soustelle to
witness the unexpected defection of intellectuals of ‘le juste milieu’ such as Aron. In
response to Aron’s public declaration that he could no longer support the French
government’s policies in Algeria, Soustelle quickly published a denunciation of what he
regarded as a suddenly fashionable “decadence” among French intellectuals in their
retreat from democratic values and embrace of Marxist revolutionaries outre mer. With
29
Sartre, Situations V, “Les Damnés de la terre”, (originally published as introduction to eponymous text of
Frantz Fanon, 1961), 176.
297
gathering fire and vitriol that would fuel Soustelle’s declarations about Algeria well into
the 1960s, he denounced Aron and his ilk for nothing less than treason,
J’imagine le mépris des chefs fellagha pour les Français qui les soutiennent, pour
ces auxiliaires qui brandissent le stylo a Paris tandis que les guerriers tirent des
coups de feu dans la montagne. Le conflit algérien est a 80% une guerre
psychologique ou l’adversaire trouve son arsenal chez nous.30
Soustelle was affronted by Aron’s position on the ‘heroism’ of abandoning Algeria and
allowing for independence. Throughout his defence of l’Algérie française, Soustelle
frequently invoked his résistant anti-Nazi past as credible evidence of the constancy of
his patriotism.31 Soustelle bridled at Aron’s argument that he, Aron, came to support
Algerian independence because that position was consistent with Republican values of
the resistance. This sort of split between former French opponents of the German
occupation over the Algerian question was widespread. The hard and courageous choice
in the 1950s and 1960s, according to Soustelle, was in defending l’Algérie française. As
far as Soustelle was concerned, Aron chose correctly in 1940 to oppose Hitler, but he was
dead wrong in 1957 to support a proto-fascist FLN.
In his pamphlet, Aron expressly condemned policy of intégration claiming that
Soustelle’s reforms were too little, too late. In response, Soustelle undertook a vigorous
defence of his policy32 and accused Aron and likeminded French intellectuals of the sort
of blindness that led les clercs of the eighteenth century such as Voltaire to dismiss the
importance of French possessions like la Nouvelle France,
Jacques Soustelle, Le drame algérien et la décadence française Réponse a Raymond Aron (Paris : Plon –
Tribune Libre 6, 1957), 2. Soustelle wrote this pamphlet in response to Aron’s la Tragédie algérienne (Paris
: Plon – Tribune Libre 2, 1957).
31
CAOM 11Cab/29 script of declaration by Soustelle on Radio Algérie August 19, 1955 En dépit des
difficultés et des souffrances, malgré même les échecs temporaires, envers et contre tout, une ALGÉRIE
nouvelle est en train de se faire.
32
Soustelle, drame algérien, 29.
30
298
On est stupéfait de la désinvolture avec laquelle notre nouveau Voltaire règle
dédaigneusement le cas des « sables brulants » comme son illustre prédécesseur
sacrifiait les « arpents de neige » du Canada.33
Twentieth-century energy politics and the Cold War were also deployed in
arguments made by the respective camps. Soustelle insisted that France had to maintain its
energy projects in cooperation with North African states in the Sahara as a fulcrum against
dependence on either the United States or Arab countries with ties to the Soviet Union.
This is classic Gaullist positioning of France vis à vis the Cold War super powers.34 In due
course, de Gaulle managed to protect French business interests in the southern Sahara
through the Evian Accords. Before he was dismissed from de Gaulle’s cabinet because of
his recalcitrance over Algeria, Soustelle had once posed for the cover of European edition
of Time magazine to vaunt the great energy future in France’s African possessions.35
Through invoking the need for energy independence and raising the scare over the FLN’s
ties to Nasser’s Egypt and to Soviet ruled Moscow, Soustelle exemplified a certain kind of
French nationalism, the kind Soustelle had once associated with Charles de Gaulle, that
strove to maintain some French wiggle room between camps in the Cold War.
In his riposte to Aron, Soustelle also resolutely denied that Algeria had colonial
status under French rule, it had he argued the status of “une symbiose…une création” that
could, as the argument went, become integrated fully into France. 36 In this respect
Soustelle’s arguments resembled those of Camus, a thinker with whom Soustelle is
33
Ibid, 31.
CAOM 11CAB/1 October 28, 1955 letter from Soustelle’s secretary confirming meeting for Soustelle
with M. Martin Directer de la compagnie dur Recherche et d’exploitation de Pétrole au Sahara
35
Dominique Balvet, "Jacques Soustelle Et l'Algérie Française: Gaullisme Et Antigaullisme." Doctorat
d'Histoire sous la direction de Jean-Francois Sirinelli, Université Charles de Gaulle Lille 3, 2003. Tome 3,
766. A photo of Soustelle appeared on the cover of Time Magazine, August 17, 1959.
36
Soustelle, drame algérien, 37.
34
299
infrequently linked. In the preface to a collection of his political writings about Algeria,
Camus clearly stated his preference for French-styled civilization over what he regarded
as Soviet backed alternatives of dubious national liberation.37 And with perhaps an
admission of weary fatalism, Camus conceded defeat for his kind of humanism in face of
a new logic of liberation that was tilted, as he sought, toward the Soviet empire,
Le temps des colonialismes est fini, il faut le savoir seulement et en tirer les
conséquences. Et l’Occident qui, en dix ans, a donné l’autonomie à une douzaine
de colonies mérite a cet égard plus de respect, et surtout, de patience que la
Russie, que dans le même temps, a colonisé ou place sous un protectorat
implacable une douzaine de pays de grande et ancienne civilisation. 38
While Camus, Soustelle and Germaine Tillion agonized over difficult Algerian choices,
Aron, Sartre and others on their side saw the Algerian conflict as an opportunity for
France to place itself, however belatedly, on the right side of history by embracing
Marxist de-colonizing movements throughout the world. There is an irony in that
positioning of competing camps of French intellectuals illuminated by colonial historian
and theorist Raoul Girardet,
En faisant face à la rébellion algérienne la France se trouve donc en première ligne
du front de la guerre révolutionnaire. Elle ne se bat pas pour la seule sauvegarde de
ses intérêts nationaux. Elle se bat pour le salut de l’Occident tout entier et pour la
survie de toute une forme de civilisation. Ces prises de position se situent en fin de
compte en un assez exact parallélisme avec les postulats soutenus simultanément
par les écrivains et doctrinaires des Temps modernes. Pour ces derniers, les
revendications des peuples coloniaux se trouvent confondues avec la cause de la
Révolution mondiale. C’est en fonction d’une menace révolutionnaire globale que,
de l’autre côté de la barricade, certains tendent essentiellement justifier leur volonté
de résistance. Le rapprochement est assez curieux pour mériter, semble-t-il, d’être
souligner.39
Camus, Actuelles III “Avant-propos”, 11.
Ibid, 23.
39
Raoul Girardet, L'Idée Coloniale En France De 1871 a 1962 (Paris: La table ronde, 1972), 343-4.
37
38
300
In his response to Aron, Soustelle stood by his former colleague in ethnology, the
resistance and in the government of French Algeria, Germaine Tillion and deferred to her
specialized knowledge. Soustelle credits her with explaining best how France had
brought Algeria to the threshold of modernity and French Republican duty of working
with Algerians to advance the process of education, urbanization and industrialization,
Mais venons-en aux deuxième problème : qu’est-ce que la France représente,
économiquement, pour l’Algérie ? Elle représente simplement la différence entre
la vie et la mort. Je voudrais que personée n’entreprenne de raisonner sur ce
problème sans avoir lu la brochure mince mais combien substantielle de Germaine
Tillion (1). On y voit décrit avec une véracité criante l’affreux processus de
paupérisation, pire, de « clochardisation » comme dit Germaine Tillion, qui broie
le peuple des fellahs. On y voit comment tout se métamorphose en cendres et en
ruine entre les mains de ces malheureux arraches par nous a leur monde archaïque
et pas encore entres dans le monde moderne. Tout le drame de l’Algérie est là.
Que l’indépendance puisée y mettre un terme est un mensonge dérisoire ; le
fellagha qui croit lutter pour voir « la fin de notre misère » ne sait pas qu’il est
cyniquement trompe par la Ligue Arabe et des néo-féodaux avides
de pourvoir ; il ne sait pas que son Etat arabe, si jamais il voyait le jour, le
condamnerait a une misère vingt fois plus profonde.40
Tillion had written her most enduring analysis of Algeria just after serving in Soustelle’s
cabinet. Her now famous description of “clochardisation” was a sobering reality check
on Soustelle’s idealized trumpeting of Mexican indigenismo and it underscored the
humanitarian social obligation Tillion believed was at the centre of ethnology,
Croyez-moi, ce n’est pas une situation enviable. Comme me disait un vieux
Kabyle : « Vous nous avez emmenés au milieu du gué, et nous y avez laisses. »
…Les autres – quatre à cinq d’êtres humains, tous appartenant a la majorité – ont
progressivement perdu les biens matériels et les stabilités spirituelles des sociétés
anciennes, sans avoir pu, faute d’instruction et de technicité, devenir des hommes
modernes. Ils se trouvent à la charnière des deux mondes – au milieu du gué –
hantes par le passé qu’ils connaissent un pue enfiévrés par l’avenir qu’ils ont palpé
en migrant, mais les mains vides et le ventre creux, entre leurs fantômes et leurs
fièvres.41
40
41
Soustelle, drame algérien, 33-4.
Tillion, l’Afrique bascule, 73.
301
In concluding his response to Aron, Soustelle decried the fatalism of French elites
and the collusion of a ‘New Left’ and a ‘New Right’ (represented, as Soustelle would
have it, by the conservative Aron) over Algeria. Soustelle persisted in emphasizing hope
and prospects for cooperation. Referencing his own social scientific background,
Soustelle claimed to have met recently with Algerian and European colleagues about new
archaeological work undertaken in the mountains of Algeria for the museum in Alger.42
Soustelle asserted that the real issue was decadence. Like his speculations about the
collapse of Mayan civilizations while roaming the Lacondon rain forest in the 1930s,
which, he argued, had occurred because Mayan elites distanced themselves from the
concerns of normal people, Soustelle feared that Algeria was a symptom of a broader
French malaise – a lack of will on the part of intellectuals in government, the civil service
and the academy – les clercs, to use Julien Benda’s term - to truly champion democracy
in the face of competing ideologies.43 In Soustelle’s view, French intellectuals might take
the fashionable position of abandoning Algeria, but in doing so they were quitting on
ordinary Algerians be they Moslems, Jews, Christians or secular Europeans, and on
France itself. In his polemical excesses, Soustelle argued that French civilisation itself
was at stake. He harkened again to his academic past - even in Latin America French
culture and language, he argued, continued to have influence as an alternative to
American or Soviet power. France, Soustelle insisted, in deserting l’Algérie française
would willingly turn its back on worthy achievements of la mission civilisatrice in
northern Africa.44
42
Ibid, 51-60.
For Soustelle’s argument about Mayan decadence see Jacques Soustelle, Les quatre soleils, (Paris: Plon,
1967), 103-4; 121.
44
Soustelle, drame algérien, 1-6.
43
302
The chasm between French intellectuals over Algeria has fascinated many
commentators. The spectacle of public argument between Camus and Sartre that began
over Soviet-style communism and continued over French actions in Algeria has spawned
numerous articles and monographs.45 Historians of latter day French Algeria are often
drawn to Camus’ magisterially disturbing creation Meursault, the feckless, morose,
seemingly unmotivated pied noir killer protagonist of L’étranger.46 Blinded by the sun
Meursault guns down an unnamed Arab on a beach. It is a pointless, careless act of which
Meursault is inexplicably proud. L’étranger is a non-ideological, humane metaphor or
prism into the complicated nature of relations between European and Indigenous
Algerians.
A lesser-known work by Camus best encapsulates his tortured view of the conflict
in his native land while situating his art in a frame that relates directly to Jacques
Soustelle’s failed mission as Governor General. L’hôte is the story of a pied noir French
instituteur, an elementary school teacher, named Daru in an Algerian mountain school in
an arid region not far from the Mediterranean coast.47 The story recounts how Daru
becomes fatally caught between factions in the Algerian-French conflict while trying to
save an Algerian prisoner of the French police. The character Daru is precisely the sort of
Franco-Algerian idealist that first rallied to the side of Jacques Soustelle and Germaine
Tillion when they embarked on the creation of centres sociaux. The real-life equivalent to
the murderous absurdity experienced by the fictional Daru is what rendered Camus
45
James D. Le Sueur, “Decolonizing ‘French Universalism’ Reconsidering the impact of the Algerian War
on French Intellectuals,” in Le Sueur, ed. The Decolonizing Reader (London: Rutledge, 2003), 103-117; Le
Sueur, Uncivil War: Intellectuals and Identity Politics during the Decolonization of Algeria (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001); Ronald Aronson, Camus & Sartre: The Story of a Friendship and
the Quarrel that Ended it (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004).
46
Albert Camus, L’étranger, (Paris, Gallimard, 1957) Originally published 1942; See Edward W. Said,
Culture and Imperialism (London: Vintage, 1994), 67, 160, 161, 174-176, 178, 179-180, 181, 184-185.
47
Albert Camus, « L’hôte » in L’exil et le royaume (Paris, Gallimard, 1957),79-99.
303
speechless about his native land in the final years of his life. Like Camus, and others of
good faith such as Jacques Soustelle and Germaine Tillion, the character Daru attempted
pathetically, in his way, to salvage French Republican honour and decency in Algeria.
Conclusion
To date, the current Algerian government has weathered the Arab spring which
saw governments overthrown in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. The government has remained
in power since it emerged following a civil war between secularists and Islamists that
ended in 2000. However, almost half a century after Algerian independence of 1962,
legacies of the Algerian-French war burst into polemic flame on a regular basis on both
sides of the Mediterranean. Since the 1990s, the question of torture committed by French
troops has resurfaced regularly in academic research, the press and parliamentary
debates.48 The shoddy treatment of Algerian military veterans who helped liberate France
from the Nazis was the subject of Indigènes, an internationally acclaimed feature film in
2006.49 Such veterans would form the military core of the Algerian independence
movement when their faith in France died in the decade following World War II.
In 2007-8, Algérie, histoires à ne pas dire, a documentary film that re-visited
Algeria and dared to suggest, a) that not all Algerians were for independence in 1962; and
b) that many Algerians of Islamic descent suffered after independence for their loyalties
to France, attracted national media attention in France.50 In February 2008, the film was
screened each evening for two weeks in a cinema close to the Sorbonne campus of the
University of Paris. Following many of the screenings director Jean-Pierre Lledo, film
48
Raphaëlle Branche, Torture et l'Armée Pendant La Guerre d'Algérie. (Paris: Gallimard, 2001).
Rachid Bouchareb, dir. Indigènes (Alger/Paris: Mars Distribution, 2006). English title Days of Glory
50
Jean-Pierre Lledo, dir. Algérie, histoires à ne pas dire (Paris : Colifilms Distribution, 2007)
49
304
critics, historians and audience members participated in lively, sometimes fractious
debate.51
In 2008, a novel by a second generation Algerian emigrant was both feted and
decried for its description of the ‘ratonade’ of 1961 when berserk loyalists of l’Algérie
Française drowned north Africans in the Seine in a day of lynching.52 Four years later in
October 2012, French President François Hollande became the first French president to
acknowledge the killings.53 In an address to the Algerian parliament, Hollande
recognized the suffering caused by “unjust and brutal” French colonial policies in the
country.54 Hollande stopped short of a formal apology. Hollande was no stranger to
Algeria. As a graduate student, he did his professional internship at the French embassy
in Alger.55 His appearance in Algeria was one of the most carefully observed appearances
of his still fledgling administration. Marine Le Pen, leader of The National Front,
Hollande’s principal right-wing opponent, was quick to condemn his speech as a betrayal
of French dignity and an invitation to increased immigration from Algeria.56
In 2013 in Canada, places with names like Attawapiskat and Kesatchewan are
staples of media and political discourse.57 These troubled James Bay region communities
51
Florence Beaugé, « trois historiens face aux tabous algériens » Le Monde (Paris : 27 février, 2008), 4.
Hamid Aït-Taleb, De grace (Paris: Hachette, 2008).
53
Maia de la Baume, “Hollande Uses Softer Tone on Delicate Visit to Algeria,” The New York Times,
December 20, 2012. www.nytimes.com Accessed December 12, 2012 5:39 AM.
54
Le Point.fr, « À Alger, Hollande reconnaît les souffrances de la colonisation, » Publié le 20/12/2012 à
17:03 – Modifié le 20/12/2012 à 17 :58; Harvey Morris, “Being French Means Never Having to Say…,”
International Herald Tribune, December 20, 2012. http://rendezvous.blogs.nytimes.com Accessed
December 29, 2012 5:42 AM. IHT Rendezvous cancelled June 28, 2013.
55
Vincent Jauvert, « Hollande l’Algérien, » Le nouvel Observateur, Du 13 au 19 décembre 2012, Section
Monde, 40-2.
56
Willy Legrand, « Discours de François Hollande à Alger : la France triplement condamnée,»
www.nationspresse.info, 20 décembre 2012 @ 12 :20 Accessed December 29, 2012.
57
See Barrie McKenna, OTTAWA, “FIRST NATIONS Attawapiskat gets help with housing,” The Globe
And Mail, December 12, 2011, page A7; Gloria Galloway, “ABORIGINAL AFFAIRS First nations unite
to support Attawapiskat Chiefs from across Canada blast government for sending third party to troubled
community,” The Globe And Mail, December 7, 2011, Page A5; David Ljunnggren, “Natives have been
52
305
in northern Ontario sit in the James Bay area where Duncan Campbell Scott first
introduced Treaty 9 in the summers of 1905 and 1906. The hunger strike of Attawapiskat
Chief Theresa Spence in the shadow of Parliament Hill, rail blockades, pipeline
construction delays and the international Idle No More Aboriginal rights movement have
been prominent matters on the Canadian national agenda over the past months.
As the twenty-first century entered its second decade, Duncan Campbell Scott
remains inextricably bound up in one of Canada’s most punishing dramas. Scott’s role
continues to be the subject of media attention.58 In late 2013, Montreal poet and journalist
Mark Abley produced an inventive book about Scott that features conversations between
Abley and Scott’s ghost. The two argue about Scott’s legacy at the Canadian Indian
department while sometimes finding common ground about poetry, painting and
Canadian culture.59 Questions remain that should and will receive attention. Recent
scholarship and journalism in Canada continues to examine Scott’s particular legacy, the
coercive, sometimes violent, application of Canadian settlement across the west, and raise
new levels of concern about a Department with a culture of routine coercion and
detachment from moral considerations in its relationship with Aboriginal peoples.60These
betrayed, leader says,” REUTERS, December 6, 2011, 4:05pm; Alanis Obomsawin, dir., The People of the
Kattawapiskat River (Montréal: National Film Board of Canada, 2012).
58
Bernie M. Farber, “The Troubling Legacy of Duncan Campbell Scott,” The Ottawa Citizen, August 28,
2013, Op-Ed Section. Accessed on-line August 29, 2013. http://www.ottawacitizen.com/opinion/oped/troubling+legacy+Duncan+Campbell+Scott/8844210/story.html
59
Mark Abley, Conversations with a Dead Man – The Legacy of Duncan Campbell Scott (McGill
University Press, Montréal, 2013) Abley and Scott’s ghost discuss the author’s 1995 film about Scott on
pages 142-3. James Cullingham, dir/prod Ducan Campbell Scott: The Poet and The Indians (Toronto:
Tamarack Productions and The National Film Board of Canada – Ontario Centre, 1995) Distribution
VTape, Toronto.
60
Candace Savage, A Geography of Blood: Unearthing Memory from a Prairie Landscape (Vancouver:
Greystone Books and David Suzuki Foundation, 2012); James Daschuk, Clearing the Plains: Disease,
Politics of Starvation and the Loss of Aboriginal Life (Regina: University of Regina Press, 2013); Ian
Mosby, "Administering Colonial Science: Nutrition Research and Human Biomedical Experimentation in
Aboriginal Communities and Residential Schools, 1942–1952," Histoire Sociale/Social History Volume
46, Number 91 (2013):145-172.
306
works broaden knowledge and understanding of the government department where
Duncan Campbell Scott worked for half a century and the policies he helped implement.
In France, Jacques Soustelle remains an important figure in historical and political
considerations of l’Algérie française and the development of the social sciences.61 Under
presidents François Hollande and Nikolas Sarkoczy, the French government, military and
business have repeatedly asserted French influence in north Africa. These developments
might suggest that Jacques Soustelle’s vision of cooperation and even of federal
arrangements between France, Algeria and the former French colonies in Africa was not
purely fanciful.
Scott and Soustelle were juxtaposed in this dissertation in order to better
understand the history and ideology of policies directed at Indigenous populations in
Canada and in l’Algérie française. During their lifetimes, both Duncan Campbell Scott
and Jacques Soustelle first emerged as exemplary cultural and political fixtures of liberal,
ruling establishments. They then became prisms for the examination of darker national
histories. As contemporary nation states like Canada and France struggle to re-define
relationships with domestic Indigenous groups or the descendants of former colonial
possessions, the observation of Scott and Soustelle will continue to reveal much about
liberalism’s enduring incapacity in relation to Indigenousness in the modern world.
61
Of the French scholarship, see for example Christine Laurière Paul Rivet le savant et le politique (Paris:
Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, 2008); Olivier Le Cour Grandmaison, Coloniser exterminer: Sur la
guerre et l’État colonial (Paris: Fayard, 2005); Raphaelle Branche, La guerre de l’Algérie: une histoire
apaisée? (Paris: Seuil, 2005).
307
Bibliography
Archival Sources
Library Archives Canada
Department of Indian Affairs
RG10a RG10 Vol. 725 William Scott, Oka Indian Report
RG10b RG10 Vol. 1028
D.C. Scott, Treaty 9 Journal (June 30-September 6, 1905)
Pelham Edgar. Treaty 9 diary (May 22-August 16, 1906)
RG10d RG10 Vol. 11, 399
Samuel Stewart, Treaty 9 Journal (June 30-September 6, 1905); (May
22 - August 15, 1906)
RG10 Vol 6810, File 470
Marius Barbeau, Lorette report
RG10 Vol 6810, file 470-2-3 (also Microfiche reel C8533)
Enfranchisement
RG10 Vol 6810, file 470-2-3, Pt.7
Duncan Campbell Scott, testimony transcript and notes, Parliamentary hearings, April,
1920
RG10f RG10 Vol. 6810, 473-12: Hearings Testimony, 1921-2
National Photography Collection
Acc. 1971-205, Box 3266 F1: Treaty No. 9 Photographs
Government Documents
Canada. Seasonal Papers. Department of Indian Affairs. Annual Reports 1862-1932
Literary Archives
LMS-0204 Duncan Campbell Scott and Elise Aylen
Boxes 1 – 14C
Ephemera LMS-0204
Duncan Campbell Scott, embroidered tobacco pouch, Box 14B
Duncan Campbell Scott, embroidered moccasins, Box 14C
308
MG 30 D 100 Duncan Campbell Scott Papers
MG 30 D 276 D.C. Scott - E. Aylen Papers
MG 30 D61 Vol 3 E.K. Brown correspondence with DC Scott
Broadcast Archives
ISN 104533
Title: National School Broadcasts. Part 2, Four Canadian Poets. Duncan Campbell Scott.
Collection: CBC, Radio: Disc collection
Collection number: 1978-0109
Production: 1948-01-16.
ISN 129996
Title: National School Broadcasts. Duncan Campbell Scott.
Collection: CBC, Radio: Special Disc collection
Collection number: 1989-0181
Production: 1947-09-16.
Consultation copy: C08478 (4)
ISN#108498 VLTSLF#8903-5674
“Night Hymns on Lake Nipigon – poem by Duncan Campbell Scott with paintings by
Norval Morrisseau,” Canadian Independent Filmmakers Cooperative, video directed and
produced by Trevor Davies and George Muncey, reading by John Arblaster, 1972.
Queen’s University Archives, Kingston, Ontario
Edmund Morris papers COLL 2140
Lorne Pierce archives COLL 2000.1 Boxes 46, 80, 81
Archives Nationales d’Outre-Mer , Aix-en-Provence, France
GGA 11/CAB (archives concerning Soustelle administration 1955-56)
Boxes 7, 8, 12, 14, 20, 21, 28, 35, 38, 41, 57, 62, 77, 81, 82, 88, 96, 100
Archives Musée du Quai Branly, Paris
Fonds Soustelle (Jacques et Georgette) ; Paul Rivet ; Germaine Tillion
309
Photography collection
Jacques Soustelle, Mexico 1932-1936
Physical archives,
Georgette and Jacques Soustelle, Mexico
Unité patrimoniale Amériques
Numéro d’inventaire 71.1933; 71.1936
Appellation Arc
Jacques Soustelle Radio Scripts
Radio Conférence 85 « Une fête dans un village indien du Mexique »December 20, 1937.
Document (15058) id Dossier 1611 DA000312;
Radio Conférence 50 « A travers les montagnes du Mexique » June 23, 1936. Document
(15058) id Dossier 1604 DA000316;
« Chez les Indiens Lacandons » June 2, 1935, Document (15027) Dossier 1604
DA000319
Archives Muséum National d’Histoire naturelle, Paris
(Salle des Valins et Bibliothèque de recherche)
Fonds Mexique, Musée de l’Homme, Paul Rivet, Georgette Soustelle, Jacques Soustelle
et Germaine Tillion
Fonds Rivet 2 APIC Sous.
Archives Musée l’Homme Dossier Mexico (I) 2 AM 1K65e
2 AM 1B11a
2 AM 1K66a MEXICO (11)
MNHN 2am 1 C9 a
Germaine Tillion, Radio Conférence 77 « Un Conte Chaouïa », July 19, 1937. MNHN
2am 1 C9 a
Archives des presses – Musée de l’Homme
Bibliothèque nationale de France – Mitterand
Principal newspapers and magazines consulted 1930 – 1990
L’Aurore
Combat
L’Humanité
L’Express
Le Figaro
Libération
Le Monde
Les Nouvelles littéraires
310
MASSES
Spartacus
Voici Pourquoi
INATHEQUE – electronic media
Lectures pour tous, December 19, 1956 Interview with Jacques Soustelle about Aimée et
souffrante Algérie.
Du côté de chez Fred, Frédéric Mitterand interview of Jacques Soustelle, 2 parts,
Antenne 2, 1989.
Manuscripts of Interviews/Memoirs of Jacques Soustelle
Soustelle,Jacques et Odile Rudelle. "Jacques Soustelle Interviews, February 19 and April
23, 1979." Université SciencesPo. Fondation nationale des sciences politiques Service des archives d'Histoire contemporaine, Paris.
Soustelle, Jacques et Georges Suffert, "Mémoires, Apocryphes Sous La Forme d'Une
Dialogue Avec Georges Suffert.". Unpublished manuscript, 1988.
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Series = CIHM/ICMH Collection De Microfiches ; no. 03651; CIHM/ICMH
Microfiche Series ; no. 03651; CIHM/ICMH Microfiche Series ; no. 03651.
Canada and edited by Leslie, John and Maguire, Ron. The Historical Development of the
Indian Act, 2nd Edition, Ottawa: Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, 1978.
Canada and Donna Lea Hawley. The Indian Act Annotated. 2nd ed. Toronto: Carswell,
1986.
Audio Visual Materials
Films
Bouchareb, Rachid, dir. Indigènes (2006) DVD distribution: Mars Distribution.
Boudo, Marcel. La Splendeur De La Mexique - Les Mayas, Written by Jacques Soustelle.
Vol. TV. Paris: TF1, 1976; Les Aztèques, Written by Jacques Soustelle. Vol. TV.
Paris and Mexico City: France 3 and Televisa, 1978. Chilam Balam, Written by
Jacques Soustelle. Paris: France 2, 1981.
Brody, Hugh., dir. Time Immemorial. From the documentary series As Long As The
Rivers Flow. (Toronto: Tamarack Productions, 1991) DVD distribution: Icarus
Films, New York; Tamarack, Toronto.
Cullingham, James, dir.. Duncan Campbell Scott: The Poet and the Indians. (Toronto:
Tamarack Productions in Co-production with the National Film Board of Canada,
1995) DVD distribution: VTape, Toronto.
. We Have Such Things At Home. (Toronto, Tamarack Productions, 1997) DVD
distribution VTape, Toronto.
Demy, Jacques, dir. The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. (1964) Beta Films, Madeleine Films
and Parc Film. United States; Port Washington, NY: Koch Lorber; Distribution:
Koch Vision.
Godard, Jean-Luc, dir. Le petit soldat (1963) DVD distribution: Rialto Pictures.
Lledo, Jean-Pierre, dir. Algérie, histoires à ne pas dire (2007). DVD distribution :
Albarès Collection Documentaire.
Ostroff, Michael. Winds of Heaven: Emily Carr, Carvers and the Spirits of the Forest.
(Toronto: White Pine Pictures, 2010) DVD distribution: McNabb Connolly..
Pontecorvo, Gillo, dir. The Battle of Algiers.(1966) Casbah Films and Igor Film.
Irvington, NY: Distribution: Criterion.
Resnais, Alain, dir. Muriel, ou, Le Temps d'Un Retour.(1963) DVD Distribution: Koch
Lorber Films.
Rial, Carmen, dir. Germaine Tillion. Nucleo de antropologia audiovisual e estudos da
imagem. 2007.
Visconti, Luchino, dir. Lo straniero (1967).
328
Radio Documentary
Moore, Christopher. George MacMartin's Big Canoe Trip. Christopher Moore. first
broadcast December 19, 2011. Ideas, CBC Radio, Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation.